FLASHBACK: Twenty years ago today, the infamous "hockey stick" was published in Nature

Twenty years ago today: The infamous “hockey stick” graph that crystalized global warming and ignited the climate wars was published, and became known as MBH98. The science in it was so bad, it is credited with spawning the modern climate skeptic movement.

Michael E. Mann writes in the formerly Scientific American:

Two decades ago this week a pair of colleagues and I published the original “hockey stick” graph in Nature, which happened to coincide with the Earth Day 1998 observances. The graph showed Earth’s temperature, relatively stable for 500 years, had spiked upward during the 20th century. A year later we would extend the graph back in time to A.D. 1000, demonstrating this rise was unprecedented over at least the past millennium—as far back as we could go with the data we had.

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, publishing the hockey stick would change my life in a fundamental way. I was thrust suddenly into the spotlight. Nearly every major newspaper and television news networkcovered our study. The widespread attention was exhilarating, if not intimidating for a science nerd with little or no experience—or frankly, inclination at the time—in communicating with the public.

Nothing in my training as a scientist could have prepared me for the very public battles I would soon face. The hockey stick told a simple story: There is something unprecedented about the warming we are experiencing today and, by implication, it has something to do with us and our profligate burning of fossil fuels. The story was a threat to companies that profited from fossil fuels, and government officials doing their bidding, all of whom opposed efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As the vulnerable junior first author of the article (I was a postdoctoral researcher), I found myself in the crosshairs of industry-funded attack dogs looking to discredit the iconic symbol of the human impact on our climate…by discrediting me personally.

In my 2013 book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, I gave a name to this modus operandi of science critics: the Serengeti strategy. The term describes how industry special interests and their facilitators single out individual researchers to attack, in much the same way lions of the Serengeti single out an individual zebra from the herd. In numbers there is strength; individuals are far more vulnerable.

The purpose of this strategy, still in force today, is twofold: to undermine the credibility of the science community, thus impairing scientists as messengers and communicators; and to discourage other researchers from raising their heads above the parapet and engaging in public discourse over policy-relevant science. If the aggressors are successful, as I have argued before, we all lose out—in the form of policies that favor special interests over our interests.

Whatever the reason for the divergence, it would seem to suggest that the practice of grafting the thermometer record onto a proxy temperature record – as I believe was done in the case of the ‘hockey stick’ – is dubious to say the least.

Mike’s response speaks for itself.

No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, “grafted the thermometer record onto” any reconstrution. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation websites) appearing in this forum.

But there is an interesting twist here: grafting the thermometer onto a reconstruction is not actually the original “Mike’s Nature trick”! Mann did not fully graft the thermometer on a reconstruction, but he stopped the smoothed series in their end years. The trick is more sophisticated, and was uncovered by UC over here.

When smoothing these time series, the Team had a problem: actual reconstructions “diverge” from the instrumental series in the last part of 20th century. For instance, in the original hockey stick (ending 1980) the last 30-40 years of data points slightly downwards. In order to smooth those time series one needs to “pad” the series beyond the end time, and no matter what method one uses, this leads to a smoothed graph pointing downwards in the end whereas the smoothed instrumental series is pointing upwards — a divergence. So Mann’s solution was to use the instrumental record for padding, which changes the smoothed series to point upwards as clearly seen in UC’s figure (violet original, green without “Mike’s Nature trick”).

TGIF-magazine has already asked Jones about the e-mail, and he denied misleading anyone but did remember grafting.

“No, that’s completely wrong. In the sense that they’re talking about two different things here. They’re talking about the instrumental data which is unaltered – but they’re talking about proxy data going further back in time, a thousand years, and it’s just about how you add on the last few years, because when you get proxy data you sample things like tree rings and ice cores, and they don’t always have the last few years. So one way is to add on the instrumental data for the last few years.”

Jones told TGIF he had no idea what me meant by using the words “hide the decline”.

“That was an email from ten years ago. Can you remember the exact context of what you wrote ten years ago?”

Maybe it helps Dr. Jones’s recollection of the exact context, if he inspects UC’s figure carefully. We here at CA are more than pleased to be able to help such nice persons in these matters.

Coincidence or not, his statement here is B.S. as it contradicted DECADES of research showing that the MWP and LIA is real and significant.
“The graph showed Earth’s temperature, relatively stable for 500 years, had spiked upward during the 20th century. A year later we would extend the graph back in time to A.D. 1000, demonstrating this rise was unprecedented over at least the past millennium—as far back as we could go with the data we had.”

Shame this WUWT retrospective did not correctly summarise this frawwdulent science.
Mann did not graft, he cropped off the inconvenient end of the Briffa data and hid the cut-off behind another line, so it appeared that all lines were showing the same rise.
Jones DID graft , he went beyond what Mann had done because he cropped and then used the same coloured line to represent two different datasets and display it as a continuous line. That was what the WMO 2000 report used on its cover and was pushed all around the world. It is Jones’ version which is the iconic ‘hockey stick’ which the public knows, not Mann’s original MBH1998 graph.

https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/wmo913.png
Note the green line , Briffa’s data according to the legend. Except that Briffa’s data was cropped at 1960 and the temp record was GRAFTED on using the same line colour. This is what Jones refers to as “Mike’s Nature Trick” except that it goes way beyond crop and hide and into blatant scientific FRAWWD.

Greg wrote, “Except that Briffa’s data was cropped at 1960 and the temp record was GRAFTED on using the same line colour.”
Not only that, he rounded the splice points to hide the grafts.

Greg continued, “This is what Jones refers to as “Mike’s Nature Trick” except that it goes way beyond…”
I would not say that Jones was more dishonest than Mann. After all, Mann was complicit in Jones’ fraud, too. It is true that Jones did the dirty deed for the version on the WMO Report cover, but his email about it was addressed to Bradley, Mann & Hughes, and cc’d to Briffa and Osborn (who replaced Jones as CRU Director in 2016). Jones didn’t go rogue, the other five were obviously in on the scheme, as well.

Nope.
It was Briffa who found a hockeystick by corrupting his entire dataset with one tree in, the Yamal peninsula.
See this for some of the worst science since Piltdown.
But we mustn’t be too hard on Briffa. If he wasn’t on “sick leave” from the CRU after this scandal came out we may never have had the crime of Climategate.
By which I mean that all the data that was gathered together into a HarryReadMe file would never have been found if he was there to protect it. Obviously he wouldn’t leak it himself so as the CRU had to circle the wagons and not throw him to the wolves.
That would be ludicrous. Although it would explain why the information was gathered in one place.

It was YAD061, the most influential and costly tree in the history of man (or Mann). It was the only tree in that group that showed a warming trend, so the study was heavily biased towards that tree. (How can a scientific study introduce a bias towards a particular component in a study….?).
That tree has cost the world about 4.8 trillion dollars, and counting. You could have encased it in gold and adorned it with diamonds, for much less.
R

There was a data set weighting used, so that those trees with a ‘temperature’ profile that matched the desired shape more closely were given added ‘weight’. One of the trees was given a weight of more than 400 compared with trees that did not have the ‘right profile’.

Yep …. Mann had his tree, and Briffa had a different tree. Both used Mann’s PC analysis or some such that weighted the data to the one tree. (Kudos to Steve McIntyre for successfully reverse engineering the beast and figuring out what was going on …. cause Mann and Jones weren’t about to give up the methods and codes). This whole debacle is what got me really interested in this whole Global Warming crap. I had just graduated grad school in environmental risk assessment, and to say the least …. I only thought the professors at my institution were corrupt … these guys took the cake …. and ate it too!

Mickey employs the Big Fat Liars’ Strategy of; lie big, because a big lie is more believable, and when called on your lie, double down and pretend you are the “victim”, and a martyr for “the greater good”. It’s the passive-aggressive way. Because that’s how he rolls.

Mann: I found myself in the crosshairs of industry-funded attack dogs looking to discredit the iconic symbol of the human impact on our climate…by discrediting me personally.

No, you discredited yourself. And continue to do so.
Who still promotes your “iconic symbol”?
How many filed an amicus brief in your support?
Why are you hiding your UVa emails?
Why do you file lawsuits instead of engaging in open debate if you are really a scientist?
Who pays your legal fees for you?You are the attack dog.
Who’s holding your leash?

The first lie is the claim that those who disagreed with him were industry funded.
The second lie is the belief that being industry funded proves that they are being dishonest.
The third lie is the belief that there is something nefarious in trying to shoot holes in other people’s work.

Recycle time!
Stopping by Yamal One Snowy Evening
What tree this is, I think I know.
It grew in Yamal some time ago.
Yamal 06 I’m placing here
In hopes a hockey stick will grow.
But McIntyre did think it queer
No tree, the stick did disappear!
Desparate measures I did take
To make that stick reappear.
There were some corings from a lake.
And other data I could bake.
I’ll tweek my model more until
Another hockey stick I’ll make!
I changed a line into a hill!
I can’t say how I was thrilled!
Then Climategate. I’m feeling ill.
Then Climategate. I’m feeling ill.

Simon
Agreed.
A bit like the UK Conservative party (Right) accusing the Labour party (left, and the opposition) of anti Semitism, only to find it to be true. The UK Labour party has admitted it’s anti Semitic.
But wait……..No such accusations against the Conservative party.
How strange.

The argument is that “trick” meant ‘clever thing’ not a sleight of hand.
Of course that misses the point. There may be no intent to deceive others. But only because they have already deceived themselves and are now looking for self-assurance.

“M Courtney April 23, 2018 at 1:36 pm
The argument is that “trick” meant ‘clever thing’ not a sleight of hand.
Of course that misses the point. There may be no intent to deceive others. But only because they have already deceived themselves and are now looking for self-assurance.”
Yet “hide the decline” surely shows intent? “Hide” assumes an active process, not passive or incidental. Even without the “trick” it shows intent to install a false understanding in others.
This gives “trick” the aura of deception and sleight of hand.
What do you think?

Chris Norman,
“I always thought the context of Jones remarks were of little consequence.”
Judging by the willingness of so many to believe the superficial, erroneous interpretations of the emails, this seems to be a common idea among skeptics. It is an indication of how far some will go to find the truth – not very far. It’s more comfortable to make assumptions and listen to those who support one’s beliefs, allowing no other explanation.

They conspired to dodge FOIA requests, delete emails and data, black ball scientists who disagreed with them, and corrupt the peer review process.
It’s all there, in their own words. To paraphrase you: “Have you read the Climategate emails, Kristi?” LOL!

Ha ha, don’t go down this road unless you want to be the ignorant fool.
I have the book that covers it well, written by Steve Mosher and Thomas Fuller.
They were doing a LOT of bad things in those e-mails.

Chris Norman,
“I always thought the context of Jones remarks were of little consequence.”
Judging by the willingness of so many to believe the superficial, erroneous interpretations of the emails, this seems to be a common idea among skeptics. It is an indication of how far some will go to find the truth – not very far. It’s more comfortable to make assumptions and listen to those who support one’s beliefs, allowing no other explanation.

I suspect that most of us agree with what you call the “superficial, erroneous” interpretations of the emails because we have read them in context, and we have seen for ourselves that context makes no difference.
Many warmists have claimed that the emails have been taken out of context, but none, as far as I know, has been able to produce an example of a Climategate email whose context provides mitigation.

Judging by the willingness of so many to believe the superficial, erroneous interpretations of the emails, this seems to be a common idea among skeptics. It is an indication of how far some will go to find the truth – not very far. It’s more comfortable to make assumptions and listen to those who support one’s beliefs, allowing no other explanation.

Kristi, you truly seem to have no clue here. Rather than mention a single instance that might support your laughable claims, you are simply throwing mud at the wall and hoping something sticks.
I submitted the first FOIA request to CRU, the one that set the whole madness in motion, and I’m one of the people mentioned by name in the Climategate emails. As such, I am much more aware than you and most folks here of the context because I LIVED IT.
If you’d like some context, you should read my post about what went on. It’s here.
My advice? Stop beclowning yourself regarding subjects about which you know virtually nothing. It just makes people point and laugh, and I assure you, they are not laughing with you …
w.

Would you care to put forth an alternative, and in your mind, more proper interpretation of those remarks?
Or are you going to pull your standard stunt and just whine that other people aren’t being nice to you and demand that they stop it?

‘It is an indication of how far some will go to find the truth – not very far.’
Just checking – this was the troll-flake who criticized posters for ‘not knowing what they’re talking about’.
This is also the same troll-flake who had the sheer, unadulterated gall to come to Watts Up With That, for God’s sake, and explain to all of us – complete with links to professional smears – where our movement came from – and why – and of course, who financed it all.
I mean, my God, this is arrogance to the point of farce – it’s a Far Side cartoon – ‘you may be a kangaroo, but I know a little about marsupials myself.’
All apparently under the impression she’s not being insulting.
But it does illustrate how far some will go to rationalize away the truth – pretty far.

Many thanks to Willis.
I have just spent hours reading your excellent 2009 post and responses just agog with horror.
Trying to look up what happened afterwards to the CRU yields words like “exonerated”.
What happened please?

If you all would simply take my post literally, you would see that I’m commenting on a particular idea: thinking one knows enough from cherry-picked excerpts without looking at the context. I think this is wrong. I think it leads to misconceptions. The exact same thing applies to CAGW supporters.
I’m not defending Mann, Jones, or anyone. I’m urging reason. I’m battling bias, prop’ganda, hate and anger. I am trying in my teeny tiny, probably ill-conceived and certainly inept way to heal the deep divide in America today. I’m doing it all wrong, though. I thought maybe awareness of the way bias is spread (on both side) could slowly in some minds make a difference, but it’s the wrong tack.
I have genuine respect and admiration for the abilities of many people here. Their knowledge and experience goes far beyond mine. But we all have different knowledge and must make decisions for ourselves. I decide to limit my judgement of Mann and cohort not because I support them, but because I don’t know the whole story.
Limited judgement isn’t blindness, though. It seems pretty clear that they did not handle their data or data requests well and didn’t behave very professionally. The code issue is a little different, especially 20 years ago. It sounds like the FOIA wasn’t too clear when it came to computer code and intellectual property rights. (Imagine finally publishing research it took years to finish, and the next week having a dozen people asking for all data used, a list you don’t have, and the code for a computer program you spent weeks on – and knowing they want it so they can try to discredit your research, even if it means misrepresenting it.)
As for the rest, I don’t know. Jones seems more at fault to me than Mann. It comes down to whom one chooses to believe: the official committees that investigated, or the investigation by the contrarians (including the investigation of 4 of the investigations). My money is on the officials, partly because none of them knew how many more investigations there would be, and what subsequent groups might find. They wouldn’t stick their necks out to save these guys, especially if the emails were as clearly damning as the cherry-picking makes them out to be. Besides, I still have some faith in humanity and the integrity of scientific oversight. I believe people realize scientific misconduct cannot be tolerated in the profession, especially in such a controversial field.
None of us here has read them AND talked to the scientists involved and other scientists in the field about this. How many here know the story behind the peer review concerns, the apparent stifling of alternate views? What do you think it was about?
……………………………………………..
People here insult me. They may laugh at me. I’m sure plenty dislike and despise me, and they sure hate what they think I represent. It’s not easy. I didn’t come to make enemies, but neither did I come to make friends or have my ideas confirmed. I’m here because I love the beauty and wonder of life on our planet. I care about the potential effects of rapid climate change on humanity. And I’m here because I care about America and Americans.

Many thanks to Willis.
I have just spent hours reading your excellent 2009 post and responses just agog with horror.
Trying to look up what happened afterwards to the CRU yields words like “exonerated”.
What happened please?

Thanks, Sporran. The best source about anything Climategate related is Steve McIntyre’s blog. There is a “Categories” dropdown on the left, and it has a link to the “investigations“, better called “whitewashes”. In most cases they never asked the right questions, they were done by friends of the miscreants, and they often didn’t even talk to the principals.
w.

If you all would simply take my post literally, you would see that I’m commenting on a particular idea: thinking one knows enough from cherry-picked excerpts without looking at the context. I think this is wrong. I think it leads to misconceptions. The exact same thing applies to CAGW supporters.

Kristi, I took your post quite literally. I pointed out that I am not working from “cherry-picked” excerpts. I am not only looking at the context, inter alia I am part of the context. And I pointed you to my clear explanation of what went down, with all the context you could want.
In response, you come back, ignore my explanation, don’t say a word about everything I had in my post regarding what went on, you make the same accusations, and say that:

None of us here has read them AND talked to the scientists involved and other scientists in the field about this. How many here know the story behind the peer review concerns, the apparent stifling of alternate views? What do you think it was about?

I know the story about it, and you are doing your very best to ignore that fact. I wrote the first FOIA to UEA CRU, I’m the one that Phil Jones lied to, I’m the one whose FOIA they were making up stories to avoid, I’m the one that their emailed excuses were sent to, I’m one of the few mentioned in the emails, so your claim is total crap. No other word for it. Absolutely bogus.

People here insult me. They may laugh at me. I’m sure plenty dislike and despise me, and they sure hate what they think I represent.

Oh, please, you give yourself far too much credit. I just think that you are incredibly biased and dense and unwilling to admit when you are wrong, but I don’t “hate what you represent”. Nor would I waste one second disliking or despising you. You’re not worth it. I save those for people that actually make a difference. Seriously, it’s time for you to follow the FIrst Rule of Holes, which says:

When you find yourself in a hole … stop digging.

Regards,
w.
PS—As I mentioned below, there is an explanation of what you laughably call the “investigations” here. Note also that a UK Parliamentary Committee said that criminal charges would have been brought for their attempts to avoid my FOIA, but the Statute of Limitations had run out by the time they got around to it …

Kristi, since you’ve never read any of the CliimateGate emails, you have knowledge regarding how much context is necessary to understand.
As a result your whining is merely more evidence that you will say anything in order to distract from the problems that others have been poking in your favorite gravy train.

The full set of Climategate emails are here:http://sealevel.info/FOIA/
The top-level folder lists 137 highlighted emails, and one source code file, plus links to folders and .zip files with all the others.
You can click on the column headers to sort in various ways.
This is the Climategate whistleblower’s “README” manifesto (minimally edited to make the message numbers into hyperlinks):http://sealevel.info/FOIA/README.txt.html

Willis,
“In response, you come back, ignore my explanation, don’t say a word about everything I had in my post regarding what went on, you make the same accusations, and say that:”
I’m very sorry Willis, I wasn’t replying to you there; for some reason I don’t think I’d even read your post, I was actually thinking of Tim Ball’s article moved from another site, not yours. It was short excerpts with interpretations and no context. Tracking down the full context could be impossible without the conversations behind them. I know how condemning they look.
How do you know you were first, Willis? You sure weren’t the only one.. Was it a coordinated effort at CA? Why would multiple people there want the info? Sounds like McIntyre was even more persistent than you. There may have been others, too, doing the same thing.
Was CA the other to get the emails from the hacker?
I read your exchange at the link you sent. I have a different perspective on it, too long to go into here.
“”Oh, please, you give yourself far too much credit. I just think that you are incredibly biased and dense and unwilling to admit when you are wrong, but I don’t “hate what you represent”.”
I give myself credit for some things, but not much, I can admit when I’m wrong. For instance, I’ve lately come to think that because of my image of the Earth as zillions of interactions, each potentially affected by climate change, I may be overestimating the ecological problems. But who knows? I don’t.
We are all biased.
I am not dense.

Kristi, here’s Phil Jones threatening to illegally delete the CRU Station Data data, rather than comply with FOI law and let McIntyre & McKitrick see it:http://sealevel.info/FOIA/1107454306.txt
Excerpt:

From: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: Re: For your eyes only
Date: Thu Feb 3 13:11:46 2005
…
At 09:41 AM 2/2/2005, Phil Jones wrote:
Mike,
… And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs [McIntyre & McKitrick] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. …

Do you think my summary of Jones’ email is a “superficial, erroneous interpretations” of it? If you do, then please tell me what you think the correct, non-superficial interpretation is.
Jones obviously knew that he was in the wrong. Note the subject line he chose: “For your eyes only”
Here’s Phil Jones, three years later, in 2008, brazenly boasting of deleting files subject to David Holland’s FoIA request… in an email to the UEA’s Information Compliance Manager!https://sealevel.info/FOIA/2368.txt
Here’s Jones, in 2009, conspiring with the UEA’s Information Compliance Manager to hide data subject to FOIA requests:https://sealevel.info/FOIA/1577.txt
Here’s Jones in 2004 celebrating the untimely death of Australian skeptic John Daly:https://sealevel.info/FOIA/1075403821.txt
Phil Jones is not a nice man. He is not an honest man, either. I don’t understand how anyone can defend that sort of behavior. I truly don’t.
But, then again, some people — including Michael Mann — even still admire Fakegate forger Peter Gleick and his accomplices at DeSmogBlog. Mann recently called Gleick “one of the most respected scientists in the country.”

Pretty much the same for me, not so much because it was crap work, but because of the large number of people that were defending such blatant statistical silliness. That made me realize how political this was and un-scientific. Had the scientific community correctly pooh-poohed the work things could be quite different now for many of us.

I was trained to be skeptical and when the CO2 CAGW issue was articulated in the late 1970’s I paid attention and came to the conclusion that the analysis of the data was flawed. CO2 Lagging Temperature change, the absorption spectrum inverse log relationship to doubling of concentration and finally the assumptions in the models appeared biased against any other warming mechanism. Including insolation Milankovitch cycles and solar flux. As Darwin said your peers will regal them selves showing you where you have misinterpreted the data. Well the facts surprisingly fell on deaf ears and this was against everything I was taught. Even Kunn would shake his head, Popper would simply dismiss it as “not science any longer”. . With the publishing of the Michael Mann “Hockey Stick” and Steve McIntire’s rebuttal it became clear that there was another horrible beast at work and it was all about poitics and water melons not about science. That was the end of it for me.

That’s what tipped me off that the whole thing was off the rails. It conflicted with too much known history around the world. What’s more it made these extraordinary claims that all that history was wrong, but offered no explanation for what mechanism caused all these historical records to be so far removed from truth. It couldn’t explain the Greenland colony. It couldn’t explain the Roman mines covered by several thousand feet of ice. It was just wrong on all counts.

Having just spent a decade fighting the great ozone hole sc@m, I was already a skeptic.
When I heard that the hockey stick had eliminated both the MWP and LIA I was pretty sure that the same people were launching the next sc@m, and I was right.

I was skeptical before then (1998) because I believed global warming was caused by ocean cycles hiding solar influence after a few years originally believing in it. I had been researching ocean anomalies since about 1995. That’s when I first claimed global temperature records will only occur from the strongest El Nino’s and the one in 1997/98 only strengthened my ideas. The Mann always trying to change history brought alarm bells ringing with this first infamous hockey stick.
Alarming, just some examples:-
1) Instrumental data added to proxy data.
2) Removing well known periods in history verified before using proxy data.
3) It become clear that data used was cut short after to hide the decline in them.
4) One now well known Biffa proxy showed significant warming where generally none of the others did.https://climateaudit.org/2009/09/26/briffas-yamal-crack-cocaine-for-paleoclimatologists/
5) Random numbers always returned a hockey stick
6) The graph couldn’t be recreated, just like Mann’s GISS.

Dave Burton,
Been reading your links. First one:
“Yes, we’ve learned out lesson about FTP. We’re going to be very careful in the future what gets put there. Scott really screwed up big time when he established that directory so that Tim could access the data. Yeah, there is a freedom of information act in the U.S., and the contrarians are going to try to use it for all its worth. But there are also intellectual property rights issues, so it isn’t clear how these sorts of things will play out ultimately in the U.S.” (Mike)
“Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents everything better this time ! And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.” (Phil)
First, this is an unnamed file or files they are talking about. We don’t know what it is, and they don’t know the kind of things they will have to hand over. They certainly aren’t going to delete the whole ground station data set just because of an FOIA request. It might be some work they’ve done that they don’t want to get into the hands of the enemy just because they don’t want to make it easier for them – and there is no scientific standard saying they should. Replication, the excuse for wanting the data, should be from the ground up to avoid repeating the mistakes of the first study. The skeptics wanted CRU’s work to try to find apparent weaknesses and trumpet them. The skeptic scientists ARE enemies of the mainstream – they have made themselves enemies through unprofessional practices, like publishing research on blogs and saying publicly that science as a profession is not trustworthy, or scientists are corrupt/biased.
Then there is an intellectual property rights consideration. The FOIA had just begun in the UK, and the scientists weren’t sure what was covered. It wasn’t the norm in climate science to share computer code or analyses (according to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee – Eighth Report
The Disclosure of Climate Data From the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia). This report found the UEA more at fault that CRU because it didn’t provide better support handling the many and sundry requests.
That’s just my argument concerning the first link. I have arguments about the other links I read, too, but I am not going to take the time. The main point is that there is stuff we don’t know, and messages can have very different meanings than they first appear. There are people behind the emails who know each other, may know if someone is kidding without an emoticon, and they are human. They say dumb things, say they will do things that they don’t do. You can’t convict someone on the basis of something he says he will do.
The case of Phil deleting files may have occurred after the FOIA request. Scenario: He gets the request, hands over what he has to, then spends a day deleting all emails with names of skeptics to avoid it happening again. There is nothing illegal about that.
I’m not trying to defend these guys. I’m saying that often there are alternative ways of looking at things. We don’t KNOW what they meant all the time.

That Graph is 100% completely irreproducible independently. Nature Tricks to Hide the Decline are unique to the person making up the dataset. You also have to ignore instrumental data until 1902. What a complete joke.

Your very accurate comment that the Mannian Graph™ is completely irreproducible leads me to think that Mann et al should have published their results here:http://www.jir.com/ which is the beb site for the Journal of Irreproducible Results.

rgirouard@sbcglobal.net,
One of my all-time favorites. Used to read in college a few decades ago, but have not kept up with for a while. My dad was an engineer, and one Christmas, when I didn’t have a lot of money, I found a JIR book in a book store and bought it for him. My favorite article from way back when was on quantum baseball. If you haven’t seen it, think of the uncertainty of whether a base runner is on base or not.

Two of the best articles I ever saw in JIR were: “Nutrition of Pet Rocks” and the ever-famous Dietz and Holden’s “Fake Tectonics and Continental Drip”. JIR was a gem; it allowed otherwise serious scientists to poke fun at themselves and show that they actually had a sense of humor (h/t, Bill Murray, “Ghostbusters”).
Regards to all,
Vlad

So long as the Primary Media Outlets control 90% of the message board the Propaganda Ministry controls tone, tenor, volume and frequency of information. With that much power they can run cover for the alarmists and bury the truth while promoting the make believe. 80% of the population are too busy devoting the majority of their bandwidth to living their lives not knowing that Government Funded Science is playing a long game to control those lives. The Government is winning.

Because being trained as a scientist does not prepare you to defend pseudoscience.

I found myself in the crosshairs of industry-funded attack dogs looking to discredit the iconic symbol…The story was a threat

I agree that the hockey stick graph is nothing but a symbol (a cult symbol) and the paper it originated in merely a fictional story. But it’s a complete lie that any industry first “attacked” the Grimace impersonator; it was first independent statisticians and hundreds of researchers that had studied the LIA and MWP that immediately discredited the fictional story you put together using pseudo proxy data.

I gave a name to this modus operandi of science critics: the Serengeti strategy.

Again, we see the words of an egotistical out of touch mook. First of all, all criticisms of the pseudo science was correct rebuttals based on scientific grounds. Secondly, there is already a name for the purported attacks you describe but it is your MO to completely ignore scientists that have come before you.
But please, keep on with your charlatan ways. You will soon be the face of scientific disgrace and your work used as the example of pseudo-science posing as science for future generations to learn from.

I still dont buy the tree ring thermometer theory. Tree growth is effected by so many things, like moisture, competition, predation, that it is a leap of faith to say that tree rings are primarily governed by temperature. For instance, a really hot UK summer will produce thin tree rings, because there is often not enough moisture during a hot summer.
Plus I was looking at rings recently in cut pines, and the trunks had wildly different ring thicknesses in different quadrants within the same trunk. One quadrant may have a sudden burst of thick rings, that was not represented elsewhere on the same trunk. So if you took cores from these trees, you would get a different temperature profile for every trunk quadrant that was drilled…! From a dozen trees, you could achieve an infinite variety of temperature profiles.
Ralph

ralfellis
April 23, 2018 at 1:46 pm
Yes, I quite agree. Perhaps by sampling multiple trees you could eliminate quadrant variation and competition issues…but then how do you reliably sort out temperature from moisture changes/availability?
However, I’m not a botanist. I would think they would/should know.

The “funny” part of Mann´s hockey stick is that it is not a temperature vs. time graph but actually a tree ring thickness vs. time. Where thicker rings mean higher temperatures, because trees grow faster at higher temperatures.
I would be worried if the blade of the stick had gone down, but the blade goes up, meaning that the trees grow faster, and that is a good thing.
Mann´s real “genius” is making us believe that trees growing faster is a bad thing.
(Yes, I know Mann´s hockey stick statistical issues)

“On this larch trunk there is strong growth in the 7 o’clock position at about 22 years, suggesting a warm climate…”
Or a storm toppled nearby trees to give this one more sunlight…
Or ash from an upwind volcanic eruption provided iron and other necessary nutrients…
Or bears pooped on the roots…
Or…

Ice cores aren’t useless, but the temporal and concentration error bars are much larger than usually given if you are trying to represent the “ambient atmosphere” at the time of firn formation. If you are just reporting the concentrations in the bubbles then the error bars are fine, but they are probably off by quite a bit for the atmosphere.
What I am saying is, they, like most proxy data, can give a general impression, but should in no way be considered precise. They are what they are and nothing more. Too many climate press people tend to make outlandish extrapolations about the implications of a paper. Many times the paper does not explicitly (or implicitly) support CAGW, but does throw a sop to it in the conclusion to get the paper past the gate-keepers. Reading the results sections is sometimes an enlightening experience.

Ice cores are now where near as bad as tree rings because the latter can’t be distinguished between two main conditions, precipitation and temperature. Tree rings are determined by sunshine levels, CO2 levels, water content, minerals in ground and temperature. Ice cores are only dependent on snowfall pressed down to ice, trapping the atmosphere at the time.http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/ice-cores/ice-core-basics/

Another point is that trees have a temperature at which they grow best. Going above or below that temperature means less growth. So even if everything else was being held equal (an utter impossibility), you would still need to know whether the temperature was above or below the optimum temperature before you could know if increasing tree ring widths meant the temperature was increasing or decreasing.

That’s a very good point.
It’s less complete than including nitrates and sunshine and moisture but far more pertinent. Even if all else were equal (like a school quiz) it still couldn’t give you the answer.
Let’s just stick to counting the rings and knowing the age.

Yes, but the argument is that the tree has a longer growing season inside the perfect bubble it will have a wider ring. (Do I believe this – not really though there is some truth). If the tree leafs out in April instead of May and doesn’t drop foliage until October instead of September, then theoretically, it would have a wider ring (all other factors being impossibly equal). Of course if it got too hot for a couple of months or there was no rainfall for a couple of months, etc, all things would not be equal.

And if tree rings are not primarily controlled by climate, then how can dendrochronology ever work? How can you compare your wood sample, grown in a micro-climate in East Anglia, to a reference sample grown in a different micro-climate in Ireland ??
The whole thing soulds like voodo-science to me.
R

I believe the Serengeti lions choose their victIm based on several key traits: weak, lame, unfit, inept, incautious, cognitively impaired, diseased and just generally incompetent when it comes to defending their position.

Michael Mann is a lying liar who spends his spare time lying. Among the biggest is a lie of omission. He was found to have committed a grievous mathematical error in the original Hockeystick calculations (failure to center the data before the principle components analysis).
He also neglects to mention that he used post hoc proxy selection. And he doesn’t think it’s worth noting that his method will “mine” hockeysticks out of red-noise data.
He is as far from a scientist as a man could possibly be—opaque, dishonest, and completely without principles … in fact, I’d say he specializes in unprincipled component analysis.
For more of his slimy double-dealing, see here … and for the true story of the hockeystick, see ClimateAudit.
w.

Surely, the post hoc proxy selection is proven. It’s the process he used to “mine” the hockey-stick shape. As w has reminded us, the method even creates a hockey-stick from red noise data. For anyone new to all this: climateaudit is a stunning read (w gave the link, above).
But there was more post hoc activity than that. He truncated the proxy data where the divergence started. Maybe not “post hoc proxy selection” in the usual sense, but nevertheless a form of post hoc proxy selection. A much more egregious one.

Mike Jonas, So he fooled himself and then didn’t discard results that fit his folly?
That’s a whoopsie.
That’s my theory. That’s what I see happened.
But it’s not “post hoc proxy selection” in the usual sense. In the malevolent sense.

It’s just possible that, at the start, he fooled himself. The process he used seemed reasonable: use the proxies that best fitted observations. But as any mathematician can tell you and as Steve McIntyre demonstrated, it’s heavily flawed. What happened next – Michael Mann doubling trebling and quadrupling down on the error in the face of sensible serious and substantiated criticism of his work – showed his ridiculous lack of any kind of scientific rigour, his absurd bias, and hence his absolute unworthiness. Perhaps the saddest part of all is that very few journalists have shown even the slightest understanding of how they have been played as fools for 20 years.

Yes Willis but some university gave him a degree (s) in science so he believe he must be one. It does matter that he missed the point of Scientific Method altogether or maybe like some of the advance degree people I once managed he was never taught the subject to begin with.

Willis
“(failure to center the data before the principle components analysis).”
Small correction, I recall. He centered the data, but he chose to center it on the 20th century portion, not the whole data set he was analysing for principal components. That was a major error. When the data is properly centered over the whole data set, the MWP re-appears.
Personally I believe that he made the error deliberately, the alternative being that he was too incompetent to perform the calculation correctly. He knew what he was doing so the misrepresentation of what the data said was deliberate.

I still chuckle at the diagnosis of “Mannchausen Syndrome by Proxy”.
Definition from Wikipedia with select alterations to suit dear Mikie:
Mannchausen syndrome by proxy (MSbP), is a condition wherein a scientist fabricates, exaggerates, or fabricates climate health problems for those who pay their salary (taxpayers), with the primary motive of gaining attention, adulation and grants from said taxpayers.
In case there are those unfamiliar with the satirical reference, there is an actual psychological syndrome called Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.

Mann, Jones and the other hockey team members have committed many egregious assaults on science. They conspired to eliminate the medieval warm period, to flatten out the little ice age, to ignore climate history of the Holocene, to pretend that major climate drivers unknown to them could not be possibly influencing modern temperatures, that science must pick one winner from among competing but uncertain probabilities, and that correlation can equal causation for adequately complex systems.
They began a corrupt regime of nearly instant citations of their own and their friend’s papers to give them i credibility in the IPCC assessment process. They accept and promote pal-reviews of alleged peer-reviewed science. They corruptly conspired to thwart papers and even whole journals they suspected would be critical of them or run counter to the hockey stick message. GCM climate modelers likewise somehow have installed a new corrupt and unscientific paradigm of exempting their own hypotheses (virtual climate models) from falsification testing. They’ve begun to finesse a post-normal message that these toys have become infallible, proven science, guiding data elimination in the ARGO float dispute.
The use of statistical tests not demonstrated (scientifically) as being fit for purpose abound in climate science. The need and desire to make hockey sticks drives tendentious proxy selections in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres (Mann, et al. Pages 2K, Gergis and Karoly, et. al.). And plain faulty analysis like that of Camille Parmisan and her butterfly studies, when married to aforementioned unscientific GCMs, mean that the biological impacts of CAGW are guaranteed to mirror the tendentious conclusions of the hockey team, and thus give false credibility due to cross-discipline matching results. And now social scientists and social and political activists have learned how to pile on and thus guarantee their own funding, needing only to find some temperature stresser to humans, communities, animals or biomes, and then marry a guaranteed upward projection of CO2 based climate models to multiply that stress, in a way that can draw nearly any desired bad conclusion, and thus forever ensconcing this alleged future “damage” into the scientific record.
These men and women have harmed science, and are still doubling down on their corrupt methods. It won’t stop until these methods stop, and people again start to ask honest questions of nature, rather than to presume they already know the answer and then set out to prove it. To get science’s mind right, this “proving” has to stop and the disproving needs to reassert itself. The publication of a paper has once again to be seen as the beginning of its replication and verification, not the conclusion of some objective truth.
[when estimating and making approximations in physics] “The way we learn what to throw out, and what not to throw out, is a central part of science, which… is NOT to know the answer before you’ve asked the question, which is religion. – Lawrence Krauss

Willis,
I have read your smooth operator story. First I want to commend you on your work. I wish I had the understanding of math and statistics that you do.
Then I want to comment on the fact that you didn’t get this published. I’m not criticizing you, I’m trying to pose a different way of seeing the experience.
You say, “After the usual long delays, they said I was being too hard on poor Michael Mann, so they wouldn’t even consider it ”
Now, is that really what they said? What was the real comment?
If you think it was rejected because you submitted it to Mann’s friends, that suggests you believe it was critical of Mann. The question is, why did you phrase it in a critical way rather than a purely constructive one? Why use his data rather than a neutral set? And why on Earth would you take out all references but those to Mann, and resubmit to the same journal? That just makes it more like a personal attack. You would have had to know that there was controversy over the “hockey stick” and that the whole community was sensitive about what might be construed as a biased attack from a skeptic layman. (Just trying to think in their shoes here.)
In the intro you say, “[3] He then goes on to say that the best choice among these methods is the one that minimizes the mean square error (MSE) between the smoothed data and the data itself:” As evidence, you follow it with a quote from Mann, “That constraint providing the minimum MSE is arguably the optimal constraint among the three tested.” However, the two statements are not the same, and it’s not a logical step to then go on to say, “[4] However, there is a better and more reliable way to choose among these three constraints.”
Do you see how “better and more reliable” is not appropriate here, when you’ve quoted and said nothing about the actual method they’ve used?
Even strangers to Mann might have rejected this, IMO. Your intro is half quote. You only have one citation. Your graphs are at different scales, making the curves look different. You only use Mann (and Jones, et al., which wasn’t in your references list); you should have used a different data set if you didn’t want to come off as picking on him. It’s odd addressing only Mann’s work and using Mann’s work through the whole thing without actually referring to it in the title. Your discussion section is weak: it’s nothing but a summary of your methods, and this is not professional.
None of this is a comment on your actual work or its value. You have to understand that there are professional standards of presentation, background, the use and criticism of others’ work. By your own admission, you had little experience with scientific publication at the time. And this is a prestigious journal.
I also don’t think it’s correct to assume that someone actually stole your idea. Considering the intervening time, it’s possible that someone vaguely remembered reviewing your piece, thought of the truncation, and brought it up to someone else. I don’t know. It’s also possible you’re right, but the thing is, you don’t KNOW that.
Willis, you give as evidence of Mann’s wrongdoing a bunch of stuff written by contrarians, on a skeptic blog. I have no more reason to believe them than I do Mann. In fact, I have less reason because I’ve seen the way they operate. I’ve seen the bias. I have no reason to trust anyone who ends a treatise trying to prove wrongdoing in someone’s work,
“I suspect that the whole episode has wider social significance as an indicator of a rather defective aspect of early 21st century scientific culture.”
THAT is propaganda. Besides, why is an economist critiquing the work of a climate scientist??? Doesn’t that say something? Aren’t there supposed to be plenty of skeptical climate scientists around?

Gee, Kristi – Steven Mosher called Mann’s actions ‘pretty close’ to criminal.
And by the way – putting an algorithm in a model to automatically produce a graph is a common trick in industry – something economists are trained to spot, but a climate scientist like Mann thinks he’s real clever, pulling a fast one.
If you take the time to read Mann’s e-mails, you will find him to be a stuck-up, contentious, Progressively bigoted little twerp, who rankled the feathers of even his close associates.
And self-declared ‘climate scientists’ are not specialists – they depend upon a wide variety of disciplines, of which they are not experts in. And then they discredit the criticism of a specialist in the field, by saying ‘they’re not a climatologist.’
See, THAT is propaganda. As is the constant, vague references to ‘possible’ consequences, or exactly what the ‘97% consensus actually means’ – usually a statement most skeptics would agree with – something to the effect of ‘C02 is a greenhouse gas, and humans are contributing.’ or ‘Climate Change is real.’
AND the fact that there are so few academics who will come out as skeptics should tell you something about the culture, and how ‘contrarian’ views are chased off campus like witches.

Absolutely. The very fact that it’s based on PCA is in a sense fraudulent. Everyone who has not studied the hockey stick will think it’s a graph that shows the average of the proxies, which thus gives an indication of the climate. But it’s actually PCA, which is not an average. If you want an average all you have to do is take the average. Trouble is, that didn’t give the result he wanted i.e. a hockey stick.
The proxies Mann used mostly showed a clear MWP and LIA signal. But Mann’s method efficientyly removed them. It literally got rid of the MWP.
That a scientific fraud still gets scientific awards shows how corrupt the climate establishment is.
Chris

I could really know nothing about science and just deduce from the way Mann talks and using common sense know everything he is talking about is pure horseshit. If proper science needs an open mind this dude has zero science credibility.

Steve McIntyre explained the Mann/Jones/Hughes/Bradley/Osborn hockey stick very well here:
If you watched that lecture then it will be obvious to you why Jones was so terrified of Steve McIntyre’s analytical powers that, in a 2/2/2005 email entitled “For your eyes only,” Jones told Mann that if Steve McIntyre and Ross Mckitrick file a FOIA request for the CRU station data, he (Jones) planned to delete the data rather than release it to them:http://archive.is/f2hjr#selection-9.2013-9.2319
Richard Muller’s discussion of the hockey stick was also very good:

I seem to recall reading one email, but perhaps incorrectly, that Briffa was upset about how his work was being used. Perhaps it was he, under the guise of being away on leave, that assembled and left open the HarryReadMe file.

Perhaps…
But who asked for all the emails to be gathered together in one place as the HarryReadMe file anyway?
Forget the Russian hacking. The policy believe the Russians had a sleeper in the UEA CRU to arrange this. Which means they sleepers everywhere.
There may be less paranoid explanations.

Tom, you might be thinking of one of these:
Climategate I:
“bullshiting and politiking in various meetings… try to convince myself that this is of use to us as a dendrochronological community…” -Briffa 0846715553.txt
Climategate II:
“I find myself in the strange position of being very skeptical of the quality of all present reconstructions, yet sounding like a pro greenhouse zealot here!” -Briffa 2009.txt
Whoever the brave Climategate whistleblower is, (s)he deserves a knighthood or damehood,

The infamous “tree” was from research done by Dr. Ken Briffa wherein he used a fossilized tree ring that was an enormous outlier within a very small sample set form the Yamal Peninsula. No legitimate scientist would do such a thing. Steve McIntyre referred to it as the most influential tree in the world

Nature’s famous “Mann Trick”. The Climate-gate emails revealed that the usual suspects used to joke about it with each other, such was their contempt for Science. Worse still, it encouraged a younger generation to think it was OK to do this sort of thing.

Which reminds me. How is Dr. Mann’s litigation against Mark Steyn et al going in The Federal Court in Washington,D.C.?
I must re-read “ Steyn’s “ A Disgrace to the Profession”.
I wonder who will front for Mann to defend the legitimacy of the Hockey Stick in court?

My guess is that Mann saw an opportunity to become famous, go down in history. It is one reason why some get into science. They dream of being an Einstein, Darwin, Galileo, etc. They are looking for a form of immortality. UN-IPCC reports were in the second edition but not selling too well if I remember correctly. A “pretty, simple picture” showing how dire AGW is what was needed in Mann’s mind. Something all the news media would run with and plaster all over. I doubt the media that ran it at the time ever even asked what an anomaly was or noticed that even if you believed Mann’s hockey stick that it was only talking about a little more than half a degree. They certainly didn’t ask how one determine temperature of the Earth from a tree ring.

IMO, you are correct. Mann is a small man with a poor grasp of how science works. He will get his fame, however, right up there with the Piltdown hoax, as a total disgrace to his chosen profession. It is ironic that he hails from Penn State….

Tree ring patterns provide information about precipitation and other conditions during the time the tree was alive.
Scientists can learn even more about precipitation and temperature patterns by studying certain chemicals in the wood.

The unreasonable part is disentangling the precipitation and the other conditions.

The hockey stick is the result of multiple mathematical errors that are not well recognized in the social sciences.
The most significant error is “tree ring calibration”. This is better known as “selecting on the dependent variable”.
The problem is that a statistics rely on a sample being random. But when you calibrate tree rings you no longer have a random sample.
As a result your statistical methods return bogus results. this amplified the instrument signal post 1850 and amplified the noise pre 1850, resulting in a hockey stick shape regardless of the proxy data.
It didn’t matter what data you used. Tree rings or any random garbage numbers. If you calibrate you end up with a hockey stick shape.

Mann had to make sure they didn’t ‘dilute the message’, ‘provide fodder for skeptics’, hand over data ‘so they could find something wrong with it’, and if they did it would result in ‘pure scientific fraud’.

Earth has warmed twice as fast in the last 50 years as in the 50 years before that.

This is an error.
Have a look at what the real temperatures from the UK MET Office.
Although NASA are correct when tey say that the wotrld has warmed since teh end of the LIA adn thus t s warmer now than then.
But that is not what NASA says here:

Well, after observing and making lots of measurements, using lots of NASA satellites and special instruments, scientists see some alarming changes. These changes are happening fast—much faster than these kinds of changes have happened in Earth’s long past.

If you had nothing else to go on, no other evidence, I can see why you might look at tree rings. But there is other evidence, so why oh why was Manns nonsense ever given the weight it was ? why was the more substantial evidence submerged ?

Easy, because he gave the IPCC what they needed to get the pols on board. There is ample evidence that the MWP and LIA happened and were not isolated instances. That was all I needed to spot a bogus graph. But it was reassuring that McIntyre and McKitrick
showed up the maths as being hinky.

Because he gave “climate science” what its voodoo practitioners wanted, ie to “get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”, which, with the Roman, Minoan and Holocene Optimum WPs, were all hotter than the Modern WP, without benefit of current CO2 levels.

And they say science self-corrects.
Only a statistically illiterate reviewer would have ignored the sudden reduction of variability of this signal (sigma/mean) during the hockey stick. Now after spending trillions of dollars, this obvious massaged data will be put to fake cemetery. Yet the instigator, just like Harvey Weinstein, is roaming free, claiming innocence and laughing at our gullibility.
I would dearly love someone expose the names of these now infamous reviewers. May they rot in hell.

It is quite possible climate researchers like Jones were selected to do the review and were simply out of their depth to spot the problems in the math.
I have met many people over the years that cannot for the life of them follow why calibration is a problem mathematically.
Two years ago there was another temperature reconstruction that again used a form of calibration.
People have a very hard time grasping the problem. And even when they do they fail to recognizes that they have managed to create another variation of the problem in their own work.
it would not surprise me at all to find that the reviews were done in good faith. Incompetence is much more common than malice.

“it would not surprise me at all to find that the reviews were done in good faith. Incompetence is much more common than malice.”
Yes, I agree, but when the error is pointed out by so many and in such easily-understood language, the honest incompetent is likely to backpedal and admit his error. This is where the malice creeps in; Mann is totally convinced of his rightness and righteousness. He is unlikely ever to admit he made a boo-boo. When he is cornered he lashes out with a vigor usually reserved for cornered Wolverines or Badgers….

The problem with tree ring calibration is that the error is counter intuitive. It seems like a good idea to give some tree ring greater weighting than others. Based on how reliably they appear to follow temperature.
Similarly it seems like a good idea to give those patients that took the medicine greater weighting than those that didn’t.
The problem is the patients may not be responding to the medicine and the trees may not be responding to temperature.
By excluding the negative cases and only including the positive cases there is no way to know.
Some of the greatest blunders in science have resulted from this error, because it yields false positives/negatives to almost every hypothesis. yet it sees so logical.

I don’t agree with some of the things Mann has said, and he tends to focus on his sob story too much. I don’t think he’s a good representative of scientists. I think if there were errors in the hockey stick graph he should have come out and admit them. He was just a postdoc at the time, so it’s not like his life would have been ruined, but on the other hand the graph was so widely publicized, it would be hard to admit. Errors are one thing, fraud is another. Since the graph has been reproduced with many data sets since, it’s not really a big deal if there were mistakes in the first. Then again, presumably the investigators went through that, too. I’m not fully convinced there errors, even though I’ve read McKitrick (2014). That paper ended,
“I suspect that the whole episode has wider social significance as an indicator of a rather defective aspect of early 21st century scientific culture.”
and to me this makes the whole assessment suspect. Anyone who makes a statement based on one incident is intentionally spreading an opinion that has no basis in fact, but at the end of a scientific paper it has the veneer of authority. This is an abuse of the authority of science no less that it would be for a Jones or a Mann or a Schmitt to say at the end of one of their research papers, “I think my analysis of the Soon research shows that contrarian scientists are all in the pocket of Big Oil.” It is not appropriate, nor is it right, and neither was McKitrick’s comment. It also talked about interviews and testimony, characterizing one excerpt thusly:
“Translation: … Yes. When we removed them the graph collapsed and the statistical scores went to zero.”
Yeah, sure. That’s what he said. This is a “translation” of a short excerpt from a long comment. In English.
……………………………………………
To me it seems as if the skeptic community is so bent on believing the mainstream scientific community is corrupt, they won’t believe the evidence otherwise. The fact that 8 investigations all cleared CRU of scientific misconduct means nothing. Too many believe someone’s interpretation of email excerpts rather than wonder what the full story is. They believe the superficial rather than the deep.
I don’t know the full story. I’m not enough of a statistician to assess that argument. I agree that there was poor handling of data and source code (although things were different then, and part of the problem was evidently about someone else’s intellectual property rights, and i can understand getting frustrated handling endless requests…the whole department wasn’t set up well to deal with requests), but the good thing is that it led to the wide, easy availability of other data.
This happened 20 years ago. One incident. There is no reason to believe it’s indicative of general corruption. Although there have plenty of accusations of fraud and corruption since, there is nothing to support them. They come from outside the mainstream climate science community and are never proved, never published, and in my experience rely on poor understanding of background research and scientific rationale.
It’s one thing to have reservations about model projections, and a whole different issue believing scientists are generally not trustworthy and have little integrity – and that it applies only to scientists who support CAGW theory. That’s just not a reasonable, evidence-based stance.

Kristi, you are an idiot! The Hockey Team is as corrupt as they come and giving any of them the benefit of the doubt is foolish. I fail to understand why you continue to troll this website. If I were in charge, you would have been black-listed a long time ago. You add nothing to the conversation, you insist that the rest of us are in error, and you refuse to back down, no matter how many rebuttals you get. This is two martians talking but I do believe I would say the same without their help!

pameladragon,
I am not an idiot. I am trying to use reason. I’m admitting I don’t know some things, which to me makes me the opposite of an idiot – idiots don’t know their limitations.
I don’t insist the rest of you are in error. That’s not what I’m trying to get across at all. My main message is that many here are being influenced toward an extremely biased view of things, and they don’t realize it.
I don’t have to imagine some conspiracy, I see the evidence here every day. I don’t think it’s right.
I care about America. There is a terrible gulf between “us” and “them,” and I don’t think it’s healthy for our nation. Nor is it healthy to lose trust in the scientific community. I want to be able to do something about it, and the only way I can think of is to put a seed of skepticism in people’s minds by urging them to be aware l of the ideas they are exposed to, the assumptions and misinterpretations. I don’t do it very well, I guess.
You would have blacklisted me.
Anthony hasn’t, and I appreciate that. It’s a good value. I’m trying to talk to him, too. I would like him to make the site more welcoming to alternative views; the main writers tend to nurture fanaticism through their annotations and comments. But it’s his site, so I don’t really expect to have an influence.
I come here to learn. I follow up, explore the evidence – I read McKitrick, and Willis’s article he submitted. Almost all my knowledge of climate and the debate has been through participating here and at Breitbart…and that has only made me more cognizant of the influences at work, on both sides.
I’m not diplomatic, I know. But I’m not a troll.
And I’m certainly no idiot, pameladragon.

pameladragon
I thought her response (unlike yours) was quite thoughtful and respectful. Kristi is quite correct I think. Many have tried to disprove the hockey stick all have failed. Yes there were errors, but the basic premise was right. Recent warming is significant. And as you will know Mann’s work has been reproduced many times. Probably the most famous was the work done by BEST. You will remember that was the study skeptics were going to accept irrespective of what it threw up. Up popped another hockey stick and suddenly the BEST team were the enemy.
Anyway all this is kind of irrelevant (although historically interesting) given the earth has shown a steep warming lately, the ice is still melting and the sea is rising.

Kristi Silber April 23, 2018 at 11:32 pm
“I care about America. There is a terrible gulf between “us” and “them,” and I don’t think it’s healthy for our nation. Nor is it healthy to lose trust in the scientific community.”
Good luck with that. What sort of nation puts a guy like Scott Pruitt in charge of the EPA (Environmental Pollution Agency). Probably the most corrupt politician around at the moment.
[???? .mod]

“Nor is it healthy to lose trust in the scientific community. I want to be able to do something about it”
if that is true, what you can do about it is to stop ignoring and/or defending the malfeasance in the scientific community that has lead to that distrust and start holding those in the scientific community accountable for their actions and insist that pal reviews, gatekeeping, hiding declines, refusing to release data and methods, etc is not acceptable.

Kristi; if you do not know the full story then you should stop commenting. Many, many people over the last 20 years have dug deeply into the processes and procedures used by Mann and others. This was not some post-doc mistake. This was deliberate fraud that continue to be propagated and defended by naive and uninformed people such as yourself. These people have hoisted themselves on their petards. The actions over the last 30 years and their words define them as fraudsters who should be prosecuted by their Universities and government funders.

Tim F,
You don’t know the full story, either, and you are naive to think you do.
Sure, many have said they’ve found terrible misconduct. But do they also tell you that Mann and co. were trying to address a problem of ethics in the scientific community that involved skeptic scientists? One that ended in the resignation of two journal editors? Or is that an incident that was twisted around to make it look like Mann was silencing skeptics? Have you really looked into it?
I’m not here to defend Mann. I’m sick of people using this incident as an excuse to say science is full of fraud.
[???? .mod]

Tim F,
You don’t know the full story, either, and you are naive to think you do.
Sure, many have said they’ve found terrible misconduct. But do they also tell you that Mann and co. were trying to address a problem of ethics in the scientific community that involved skeptic scientists? One that ended in the resignation of two journal editors? Or is that an incident that was twisted around to make it look like Mann was silencing skeptics? Have you really looked into it?
I’m not here to defend Mann. I’m sick of people using this incident as an excuse to say science is full of fraud.
[???? .mod]

Kristi, as usual you are long on accusations and short on links, facts, names, support, or anything to back up your accusations.
I assume you are talking about the case of Chris de Freitas. For those who are interested in facts rather than your puerile claims, you can read about it here.
Of course, given the typically fact-free nature of your vapid attack, you may be talking about something else entirely …
w.

Willis, I’ve tried to be civil to you. At one point I even enjoyed exchanges with you. But your continued “puerile” insults of me are wearing thin. You are a bully.
I’ve been reading the climategate emails.
Then I go to the link you give me. There’s an excerpt, then, “The first point to note is their concern is as much about the impact upon policy as it is about the science.”
THIS is the reason I have so little respect for your movement. You people can’t keep politics out of science, and you attribute political motives to scientists in order to cast doubt on the integrity of their research. It’s reprehensible.
As I said, I have been reading the emails. I find this group of scientists talking about the purity of science, the quality of science. They believe it’s their professional duty to be whistleblowers. It’s not something they wanted to do. It’s interesting seeing these others on the same subject, but a different subset. They are interpreted in ways that are simply irresponsible, biased, imaginative, and meaningless. Read the emails, not the interpretations. Read them as typed, without the stress added. You probably have, and you want to see in them evil designs. Reason will get me nowhere because you are so filled with anger, or whatever it is, I don’t know.
I read your whole email interaction about the FOIAs, too. I want to find out if skeptic complaints are justified. Still looking.
I don’t give a d— what you think about me, so you can insult me all you want – it just shows me the kind of person you are.

Kristi, you keep deferring to the eight enquiries. As Judith Curry said (as best I recall) the enquiries were like calling the fire brigade because your house is on fire, but they look only in the basement, assert ‘no fire here’ and leave you to it. The various enquiries were Yes Minister parodies – seems impossible, I know, but that’s what we have. For a complete forensic deconstruction, seehttps://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/Climategate-Inquiries.pdf

DaleC,
Do you really believe that report is going to give an accurate assessment of the depth of the investigations? See, that’s a problem right there. If you can’t identify the sources of bias and learn to be SKEPTICAL of THEM, you will never find the truth.

” If you can’t identify the sources of bias and learn to be SKEPTICAL of THEM, you will never find the truth”
Says the person showing a complete lack of skepticism over the entire issue. Try practicing what you preach sister

And another thing, being skeptical of a source of bias does not require dismissing the message as you do – that’s attacking the messenger because you can’t handle the message. Everyone has biases, even Mr Mann whom you are rushing to defend like a white knight. Having a bias does not necessarily mean ones message is wrong. One should evaluate the message based on its merits or lack thereof something you clearly have shown you don’t do.

Kristi, once again you make the assumption that those who disagree with you are either incompetent or evil.
Those of us who graduated more than a year or two ago, have actually read the entire report of the investigations and have reached our conclusions based on all the data.
And yes, the Dale’s summation is accurate.
In one investigation, they interviewed the accused, and when he declared his innocence, they wrapped up the investigation.
They were white washes designed to quickly clear the name of someone who was bringing lots of money into the university.

Kristi,
The main British inquiry was asked, by a reporter, about the deleted emails and the the lead investigator admitted that they never asked Jones et al about them. You seem incredibly ignorant on this topic.

John Endicott
Of course I know who Jones is. I was playing the part of the ignorance of which I was accused.
“” If you can’t identify the sources of bias and learn to be SKEPTICAL of THEM, you will never find the truth”
“Says the person showing a complete lack of skepticism over the entire issue. Try practicing what you preach sister”
Baloney. You have no idea what I think. And you aren’t getting it. I’m saying, be aware of the influences on you that are biased, and be skeptical of their message. I’m not hanging out in a playground of bias confirmation. I am challenged by the ideas and evidence of others, and I do not ignore them, I explore them. I know them far better and more thoroughly than I do CAGW arguments.
>>>Most of what I’ve learned about the debate and about skeptics and the skeptic movement has come through interacting with skeptics themselves.<<<
But that has also led me to sites that address influences on skeptics. I can see why emotionally people are reluctant to dig too deep, but from the standpoint of reason and truth-seeking people should know how others tried to manipulate them. It may not be a coincidence that the messages industry chose to instill 20 years ago are the same ones used by the skeptic community today, despite the advances in science.
Skepticism is good, but if non-experts are going to make a choice, at some point he will have to trust someone on authority. Laymen like me don't have the ability to personally evaluate all the science involved. I trust in the mainstream scientific community partly because I seen no proof that I shouldn't, even after reading plenty of articles saying I should. Whenever I dig deeper, I find that people have twisted words, perverted meanings, and that is reason not to trust the skeptic side. Also, the science of the skeptics is weak. I have reasons as well as bias.
daveburton
Thanks, I'd been reading the emails already.

Kristi,
As Feynman famously said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts”. In the case of CACA, it’s actually easy for a layman to know that the Team has got it all wrong. To cite but one readily understood instance, where is their evidence that positive water vapor feedback triples the greenhouse effect of CO2? Without that unphysical, evidence-free assumption, ECS is only around one degree C per doubling of CO2, hence nothing at all about which to be concerned, but welcomed, with the obvious benefits from more plant food in the air.
Had you trusted the experts in 1540, you’d believe that the sun goes around the earth. In 1780 that combustion owes to phlogiston. In 1850 that God made every species and that humors cause disease. In 1900 that earth is only tens of millions of years old and that space and time are absolute and gravity instantaneous. In 1950, that continents don’t drift. In 1980, that bacteria don’t cause ulcers. To name but a few such instances. The consensus is always wrong.

“He was just a postdoc at the time, so it’s not like his life would have been ruined, but on the other hand the graph was so widely publicized, it would be hard to admit”
Admit you are wrong and you are just another post-doc back with the rest of the field and the glory, tv interviews, adulation and eco-warrior conferences are gone. No more sharing the stage with Algore etc
Hard to give it all up

Any scientific publication is devalued by giving space to Mann. His musings belong in the Fairy Tale section like so much other nonsense that is published on so-named Climate Science and run-whenever-they-like electric power generators.

Lying liar mendacious Mickey Mann sold his worse than worthless soul for less than a mess of pottage.
His career has prospered, but posterity will remember him as far more felonious than the perpetrator of the Piltdown Man ho@x. He has blood of millions of victims on his hands, just like eugenics enablers of the N@zis, and is responsible for humanity squandering trillions due to charlatans feathering their own nests at the expense of billions of people.
He and those of his ilk should be hauled up on charges of grand theft and mass murder.

Kristi, please take the time to watch the videos of Steve McIntyre and Richard Mueller, and to review the comments above: The IPCC ‘researchers’ were corrupt. The Climategate emails show they were on a mission to document catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW). To that end, they conspired to get rid of well documented periods that didn’t support CAGW (the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and the ‘1940’s warm blip’), and to get rid accomplish this they used a questionable proxy (tree growth in response to climate), discarded unsupporting data, and tortured the remaining data using an unreliable variant of PCA to produce the desired result (the now infamous ‘Hockey Stick’ graph). When the original graph wasn’t dramatic enough, they deleted a part of it (that showed an apparent decline in temperatures after ~1960) and spliced historical temperature readings into that section of the PCA. When questioned about their work, they refused to share their data and methods, conspired to their delete data and methods, and additionally conspired to delete their emails if necessary to prevent people from finding out the truth.
These people are NOT scientists in any way, shape, or form. They are corrupt liars who conspired to twist science in an effort to create a false narrative for politicians. That is the definition of a witch doctor.

It’s really funny how MarkW has a fantasy Kristi he likes to talk about who shares so few similarities with me besides a name.
Louis,
I know about the things you mention. I have a different view. The evidence you cite is the same I’ve seen, but without the “skeptic” spin. I’ve read some of the “science” posted at ClimateAudit refuting Mann’s work as well as the work itself.
I don’t claim to be able to assess the science itself, but I find the skeptic work so riddled with policy, advocacy, opinion, and insult that it doesn’t have even the veneer of professionalism.
There is more than enough evidence of incidents of wrongdoing among skeptic scientists to balance those alleged among mainstream scientists. I don’t back up my claims with evidence simply because it takes time and I don’t think it would make any difference. Not to those who are certain their ideas are right.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m ignorant of skeptics’ claims, though.
“Kristi, please take the time to watch the videos of Steve McIntyre and Richard Mueller, WHY? DO THEY HAVE NEW EVIDENCE? and to review the comments above: The IPCC ‘researchers’ were corrupt. SO SOME SAY. IF TRUE, THE WORLD WOULD HAVE RESPONDED. TOO MUCH RIDING ON THIS. The Climategate emails show they were on a mission to document catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW). To that end, they conspired to get rid of well documented periods that didn’t support CAGW (the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and the ‘1940’s warm blip’), THOSE ARE ACKNOWLEDGED; THEY MAKE NO DIFFERENCE TO CAGW. DO YOU MEAN MANN’S COMMENT ABOUT “CONTAIN”? CITE THE EMAILS and to get rid accomplish this they used a questionable proxy (tree growth in response to climate), TREE RING, ICE CORES, ICE MELT, EXTENDED RECORD discarded unsupporting data, ??? and tortured the remaining data using an unreliable variant of PCA to produce the desired result (the now infamous ‘Hockey Stick’ graph) I’M NOT CONVINCED EITHER WAY ABOUT THIS . When the original graph wasn’t dramatic enough, they deleted a part of it (that showed an apparent decline in temperatures after ~1960) THIS WAS LEGITIMATE. THE DECLINE HAD ALREADY BEEN DOCUMENTED ELSEWHERE AS A WIDESPREAD ARTIFACT, AND WASN’T PRESENT IN THE INSTRUMENTAL RECORD. THE PROBLEMS WERE, AS I UNDERSTAND IT, IN THE IPCC GRAPH, NOT THE ORIGINAL PUBLICATION and spliced historical temperature readings into that section of the PCA. When questioned about their work, they refused to share their data and methods, conspired to their delete data and methods, and additionally conspired to delete their emails if necessary to prevent people from finding out the truth.” THE FOIA RESPONSES WERE UNPROFESSIONAL, TRUE, AND IT DOESN’T EXONERATE CRU TO NOTE THAT THE REQUESTS WERE SOMETIMES UNPROFESSIONAL AS WELL. FOR EXAMPLE, MULTIPLE PEOPLE FROM CLIMATEAUDIT WERE MAKING FOIA REQUESTS AT THE SAME TIME, AND THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR THAT. CRU FELT IT WAS HARASSMENT.
STILL, I’M NOT DEFENDING CRU, MANN OR ANYONE ELSE, I’M JUST TRYING TO SEE THIS RATIONALLY AND SHOW ANOTHER SIDE TO THE STORY. People started saying I was defending Mann before I said anything about him! I don’t even really like the guy.
NorwegianSkeptic,
I know the scientific method. I also know there are plenty of variations on the standard scientific method that are valid. The methodology – the philosophy and reasoning behind the methods – is more important than the method per se.
Experimental design and use of the correct statistics are vital.
Models have long been standard, accepted scientific tools. Tree ring interpretation is not straightforward, but it, too, is an accepted tool.
What’s your point?

Kristi,
Yes, it is reasonable to blame the mendacious, rent-seeking, nest-feathering, trough-feeding, cr!minal CACA Team of charlatans for the squandering of trillions in treasure and millions, if not tens of millions, of lives. Not to mention the massacre of billions of birds and bats.

Meteorologist,
The gatekeepers will make sure that it keeps warming in their cooked books for as long as possible. But eventually Mama Gaia will have her say.
If in objective physical reality, however, it does indeed keep (or start) warming relentlessly for the rest of the century, as in the GIGO models, then I’ll have to say I was wrong. But I’m unlikely to make it past 2050, when I would turn 100.
If I’m still alive in 20 years however, and Earth in reality has warmed since now until then, I’d say that I was wrong.

As I recall when Mc &Mc broke the scandal, they had an approximation of Mann’s “model”. Also recall, that even random numbers entered would produce a “Hockey Stick”, which is mentioned in an above post.
The chuckle I get when describing the offense to science is that “Even if you put in baseball scores the ‘model’ would print a ‘Hockey Stick'”.

Hoax,
Some people fall for a hoax.
Some people like a hoax if they can make money off of it. The hoax was not only Michael Mann’s hockey stick but the whole climate change CO2 global warming theory.
When the hoax allows people to keep making money, decades later, they continue to propaganize it in as many ways as possible to keep the income going.
Eventually, human nature results in “believers” and the hoax gets bigger and bigger and becomes a following that includes lots of people and involves lots of money.
One day, as much as centuries later, the hoax eventually dies or the worst result happens, in that it continues to grow into a religion.
The final story is still not told yet. Your grandchildren may be altar servants in the new following.

Bill,
The difference is that this ho@x is falsifiable, in ways that the Second Coming and other millenarian cults aren’t.
Maybe I’m too optimistic about human nature, but IMO there will come an ignominious end to this ho@x as to eugenics, which wasn’t so much a ho@x as an impaired understanding of natural selection, crossed with various unwarranted prejudices.
But you’re right that it’s a ho@x which has been seized upon by Leftists intent on signalling their virtue.

I have given several skeptical man made climate change presentations to fellow engineers. I show the hockey stick graph early in the presentation and ask if my fellow engineers see something strange in the graph. Runaway man made global warming is well under way by the year 2000. Look at the graph again. We are in the year 2018 and there are no runaway temperatures. That usually convinces engineers that something is not right about the theory. If we engineers had conducted a study and missed a prediction by this much we would hang our heads in shame, not try to make excuses and justify what we had done.

But to be clear, the first anti-science shot across the bow was Ben Santer’s human finger-print attribution fraud he committed in 1995 on the Second AR WG 1 report. He committed his act of scinetific malfeasance after his colleagues had departed the Madrid coordination meeting. That Mr Santer is still drawing government paycheck as a climate modeller is a travesty on all science.

There is not a little irony that Mann’s claim to fame comes from denying climate change. The quality of Mann can be seen in not how AGW sceptics view him but as show in the leaked e-mails how his own side view him. Hence way he will be first under the bus come to day , one that can not be to soon, the rats in the sack seek to save themselves at any cost .

Willis,
thanks for the link to you’re “okole…”.
It’s the first time I have seen such a clear demonstration of Climategate in action.
As you may know, I’m not a scientist, nor even particularly well educated, but even I can identify, without reference to your excellent explanations, that Phil Jones et al were (and presumably still are) twisting the FOIA, Data Protection Act etc. until they scream.
At one point I think Phil Jones refers to being forced to adopt a more formal tone in his communications. I’m sorry, but my expectation from my past employment is that anything communicated relative to work remains formal, clear and professional. In my ignorance, I understood the scientific community to conform to that expectation as members are so highly educated, however, it seems not, which entirely discredits science itself.
And whilst I am largely uneducated, it doesn’t mean I’m not familiar with process and communication. I was a police officer and it was almost beaten into each and every one of us that communications, from the notebooks we used to record information on, through the raising of initial crime reports, to the actual report itself, often long and complicated documents, must be concise, clear and truthful because one day casual language, processes and lies would be publicly announced in a court room.
Climate Audit seems to have been the climate communities courtroom. Had this been a criminal case, and those emails been produced in evidence, I’m certain the question of attempting to pervert the course of justice would have been raised. Ducking, diving, and colluding with others to withhold, and even delete data germane to an investigation is considered a crime in the UK, almost as serious as the original crime.
It seems you have spent more than 12 unpaid years pursuing this matter, that’s a huge chunk of anyone’s life. The climate community in general, both alarmists and sceptics, owe you and your fellow sceptics a huge debt of gratitude. You have received scant praise for your efforts to hold these peoples feet to the fire but there are innumerable knowledgeable commenter’s over the years of WUWT (and CA etc.) who have benefited from your diligence.
Thank you.
HotScot.
PS. My thoughts are with Toronto today.

ALLAN MACRAE April 24, 2018 at 1:35 am
Scientists opposed to Kyoto have now been vindicated. As a result of a Material Complaint filed by Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph and Steven McIntyre, Nature issued a Corrigendum in July 2004, a correction of Mann’s hockey stick. It acknowledged extensive errors in the description of the Mann data set, and conceded that key steps in the computations were left out and conflicted with the descriptions in the original paper.”
Not the corrigendum that I read!http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/shared/articles/MBH98-corrigendum04.pdf

Some history of the Piltdown Mann saga:
We knew MBH98 was biased, false nonsense the moment it was published – because it eliminated the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age from the climate record. It took Steve McIntyre’s tireless and highly competent work to decipher the mechanism of this Big Lie, which was fabricated to support the now-defunct Kyoto Protocol.
These warmist clowns have a well-earned reputation for NEGATIVE CREDIBILITY. ALL their very-scary predictions of the past decades have FAILED TO MATERIALIZE – THE WARMISTS HAVE A PERFECT NEGATIVE PREDICTIVE TRACK RECORD.
The practical solution? Assume the climate clowns are lying all the time – probabilistically, you will be correct – and you will save yourself a lot of time.
Regards, Allanhttp://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/03/climate-science-fraud-at-albany-university/#comment-126075
[excerpt]
Too right Leif,
Here is further evidence of this deplorable behaviour from the warmist camp, excerpted from an article I wrote circa 2005 and published in E&E:
“Mann eliminated from the climate record both the Medieval Warm Period, a period from about 900 to 1500 AD when global temperatures were generally warmer than today, and also the Little Ice Age from about 1500 to 1800 AD, when temperatures were colder. Mann’s conclusion contradicted hundreds of previous studies on this subject, but was adopted without question by Kyoto advocates.
In the April 2003 issue of Energy and Environment, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and co-authors wrote a review of over 250 research papers that concluded that the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were true climatic anomalies with world-wide imprints – contradicting Mann’s hockey stick and undermining the basis of Kyoto. Soon et al were then attacked in EOS, the journal of the American Geophysical Union.
In the July 2003 issue of GSA Today, University of Ottawa geology professor Jan Veizer and Israeli astrophysicist Nir Shaviv concluded that temperatures over the past 500 million years correlate with changes in cosmic ray intensity as Earth moves in and out of the spiral arms of the Milky Way. The geologic record showed no correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentrations and temperatures, even though prehistoric CO2 levels were often many times today’s levels. Veizer and Shaviv also received “special attention” from EOS.
In both cases, the attacks were unprofessional – first, these critiques should have been launched in the journals that published the original papers, not in EOS. Also, the victims of these attacks were not given advanced notice, nor were they were given the opportunity to respond in the same issue. In both cases the victims had to wait months for their rebuttals to be published, while the specious attacks were circulated by the pro-Kyoto camp.
Scientists opposed to Kyoto have now been vindicated. As a result of a Material Complaint filed by Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph and Steven McIntyre, Nature issued a Corrigendum in July 2004, a correction of Mann’s hockey stick. It acknowledged extensive errors in the description of the Mann data set, and conceded that key steps in the computations were left out and conflicted with the descriptions in the original paper.”
**************************
Later, the Wegman committee issued a scathing condemnation of the Mann hockey stick conclusions.
We knew Mann’ hockey stick was wrong all along, but it took Steve McIntyre to show us exactly how it was wrong.
However, it took years for Steve to uncover the truth. Meanwhile, the warmist camp has hatched many new alarmist falsehoods.
Detailed rebuttals a la McIntyre take much longer to prepare than it takes the warmists to fabricate new scary stories.
Better to just assume that everything that comes from the warmist camp is self-serving, alarmist and false. Recent history has shown that there is a 99% probability that you will be correct in this assumption, nine times out of ten.
*****************************

To Kristi Silber: You seem like well educated person and willing to learn about the “Hockey Stick”. You must go back to the beginning. The IPPC could not explain what caused the Mid-evil Warm Period. So they came up with an answer, the Hockey Stick”. During a Senate hearing an email from one of IPPC lead scientist to another scientist surfaced stating “we must get rid of the “MWP”. Next thing you know it was gone. If that doesn’t raise your interest of what going on nothing will. At top top of the page you will find a reference link. Find out about the “who’s doing what and why”. Or you can be just lazy.

“Nothing in my training as a scientist could have prepared me for the very public battles I would soon face. The hockey stick told a simple story: There is something unprecedented about the warming we are experiencing today ”
Nothing in your training as a scientist prepared you to torture the data to get the story that you wanted everyone to hear. Pretty sure that you were told not to.

To Kristi Silber: I just an old construction worker. Been working outside in this weather/climate all my life. If you go back to the “Hockey” Stick” beginning you should go back to the beginning “Why Co2 is Bad” I believe it has to do with the “UN”,”coal miners”, “nuclear power”, “research funds” and the UK.
Good luck, have fun.

I note with no surprise that amongst all the discussion in this thread there has yet to be any real discussion of “numbers” by which I mean the actual data that Mann eventually and reluctantly made available. The first part of Kristi’s contribution of 23rd April,10.50pm perhaps indicates why this is so. Quote
” Willis,
I have read your smooth operator story. First I want to commend you on your work. I wish I had the understanding of math and statistics that you do.” End quote.
I have no idea how much understanding of math and statistics the Kristi has, but will assume that he knows what principal components are, and why authors addressing complex data sets use them, and more especially at the practical level that he can manipulate a spread sheet (or statistical software) to handle substantial arrays of data and carry out computations on these arrays.
On this assumption I recommend that Kristi collects the Mann data set (112 columns and up to 583 rows, if my memory from nearly 20 years ago is correct) and does some processing. First, though, we should I think decide to accept at face value the numbers that Mann used in his construction of his famous plot. We need to accept that each of the data columns is a parameter that Mann genuinely believes (or at least believed) to be a valid measure of the “climate” existing at the sites of the columns, and thus is a proper and reliable contributor to the sum of knowledge on the Northern Hemisphere temperature – or proxy for temperature – for the years that are included in the investigation. If that is not so there’s no point in going any further. As a starting point, and without other sources of information, one would expect (or hope) that the data columns have roughly equal weight. If a column’s weight is deemed to be very small relative to that of others why include it at all?
You will note plenty of oddities in this large block of data. For example some data values that are in different columns are recorded as being exactly the same as some others – to 6 or more digits!. Some data are not directly related to temperatures (precipitation for example), and other data come from the Southern Hemisphere. Many are labelled as being principal components themselves. This sort of thing can legitimately raise a few eyebrows regarding the validity and appropriateness of the data, though apparently not the those of the reviewers of the MBH98 paper. The striking variety of data means that the sizes variances of the recorded numbers are on hugely different scales, so that simple averaging across columns would be a nonsensical operation.
Thus, to proceed at all with analysis it is necessary to normalise all the columns to mean zero, variance one, noting that because of varying column lengths averaging across normalised columns could still be a somewhat questionable procedure, but it is still vastly preferable to other simple homogenisation techniques.
Now, at last, you should be able to go ahead with some straightforward analytical work. This would naturally begin with graphical analysis, since Mann’s earth-shaking conclusions were based on plots.
So, Kristi, you are now able to make some fact-backed statements about what Mann’s data can tell us, rather than relying on what others have to say about it, including Mann.
I’ll not spoil the pleasure and fun of doing this work, except to say that whatever you do, you will find no hint whatsoever of an overwhelming hockey stick sitting disguised in the data. Why? Because there isn’t one.
I did all this nearly 20 years ago, when Steve McKintyre kindly sent me Mann’s original data. The stats content is minimal, so any misgivings you may have on that score regarding your knowledge are unnecessary, and it is very obvious that you are not stupid!!
I wish you well on your voyage of discovery.

robinedwards36,
Thank you for the courteous post. Interesting idea. The problem is, I also know enough to realize that simply graphing data is not necessarily going to get me anywhere. The PCA was used to pull out patterns in the data, no? These patterns might correspond to influences of latitude, altitude, precipitation, and, of course, temperature. The interaction of these factors is why looking at graphs of raw data is not informative. Graphs are usually meant to represent a result visually, not in order to get a result (except sometimes in an exploratory fashion, such as validating statistical assumptions). I’m sure there are exceptions.
The data set is only valuable to one who knows what it means and how it was used. There could be whole rows and columns that weren’t part of the analysis. It’s impossible to know without seeing the computer code what was included in Mann’s paper.
Variants of the ‘hockey stick’ shape have been reproduced again and again since Mann’s. Whether he did it right or not, he got a good (but not perfect) estimate of reality.
“…it is very obvious that you are not stupid!!” That’s very nice to hear. I know I’m not, but it’s hard to say what others see. Thank you!
“I wish you well on your voyage of discovery.”
Likewise, whatever that voyage may be. Let life be filled with discovery!

The big irony is that at the time this Mann-termed “iconic” (also note his use of another religious term “observances” in connection with Earth Day) graph was published, it was the end of the warming period and the beginning of the dreaded “Pause” that extended ~2 decades and appears to be about to resume again despite being marinated in warm night sea air in the Karlization “hide the decline” of the instrumental series. The hockey stick blade has been bent back flat and is now a scythe.

Call me old fashioned but the most recent global anomoly in Hadcrut4 was for Feb 2018 at 0.523 whilst in Feb 1998 it was 0.763 ie 0.24 cooler now than 20 years ago.
What an ironic fact for a Hockey Stick to contend with.

This one graph effectively rewrote human history. MWP and LIA were shown to be figments of civilizations history. Anybody who studied history and assumed these were events that had any impacts were shown to be charlatans promulgating falsehoods.
Yeah, I can see that being an problem for 20% of scientists.

MarkW –
I have no reason to, since I’m not defending them. The handling of data was disorganized and unprofessional.
At the same time, I can understand their motives. It would be a rotten position to have to give what you’ve worked so hard on to someone who really does only want it in order to find any possible weaknesses and gnaw on them until the whole study is discredited, whether justly or not.
Among the emails demanding data:
“1. raw monthly station temperature time series as contributed to Jones/CRU from various global meteorological organizations, together with metadata.
2. corrected and correct monthly station temperature time series used to generate trends together with a list of all corrections;
3. The results of all homogeneity testing.
4. Station documentation for each station along the lines as set out in TR022 and TR027 but updated and expanded to include all current stations. That is a start, more is required, for example, all station intercomparisons must be listed and those that influenced decisions should be ranked.
5. A list of stations used to generate trends, that have not reported in 2004.
6. Expanding on 5, a list should be supplied for each year back to 1995, of all stations that ceased reporting each year.”
This is not the kind of thing used in experimental replication. You want to replicate it, you start from scratch. Otherwise you could just incorporate the same mistakes. This is the kind of this one would use to “locate” errors without knowing what the original team did precisely.
Antagonistic science is corrosive to quality and standards. There is much discussion in the “climategate” emails about the duty of scientists to uphold the quality and “purity” of science, and to them that meant rebuttals in the published literature. It also meant putting an end to a biased peer review process that was allowing poor-quality science to get published. They dwell on quality, and also mention an ad hominem attack on the field got published, something that should have been edited out during peer review.
So, I don’t defend how CRU handled it; I think they were wrong, but I sure don’t side with the skeptics, who have themselves been unprofessional.

Kristi, you really stepped in it, this time. You could not be more wrong.1. The data does not belong to Jones, Mann, etc. They did not pay for it.
Just the opposite, in fact. They’ve been paid for it. The taxpayers paid for it, and the taxpayers also paid Jones, Mann, et al for stewardship services. They have no ethical right to hold that data hostage!2. It is not“a rotten position to have to give what you’ve worked so hard on to someone who really does only want it in order to find any possible weaknesses and gnaw on them until the whole study is discredited.” That’s what real scientists do.
If you are confident that you didn’t botch your work, then you have nothing to fear from other scientists going over it with a fine-toothed comb, looking for mistakes. It doesn’t matter whether they’re friendly or hostile.http://magazine.amstat.org/blog/2011/07/01/trust-your-science/
For my one little published paper in the field, I archived all the data, plus all the computer source code, and I wrote up instructions to make it as easy as possible for anyone to replicate what I did, and I put it all into a .zip file on a public archive.
It’s been there over five years. So far, nobody has found any errors. But if anyone were to find an error in my work, although I would not enjoy learning that I’d made a mistake, I would nevertheless be grateful to the person who found it. I would sincerely thank him or her, regardless of whether he was friendly or hostile.
I don’t need to hide my code and data to prevent hostile people from finding errors in it. It stands on its own.
That’s not a boast, and that’s not unusual. It’s simply a statement of what every scientist should be able to say.3. Temperature measurement data is not the results of “experiments,” and you can’t “start from scratch” and make a new batch. The station data, which Jones, Mann et al were so desperate to keep out of the hands of skeptics, is irreplaceable.
Yet the whole “hockey team” (and even the UEA Information Compliance Manager!) were willing to break the law to keep that data out of the hands of skeptics, and Jones even told Mann that he contemplated destroying that irreplaceable data to keep it out of the hands of skeptics.4. You apparently have no idea what “replication” entails. It means being able to reproduce every step of the process. That includes any measurements or experiments which can be redone, but it also includes every calculation.
Science cannot be advanced by hiding your errors! Any scientist worth his salt will be willing to show his work, and subject it to critical scrutiny by anyone and everyone.
If researchers won’t expose the data and code they use to scrutiny by other scientists, including hostile ones, then their work cannot be trusted.

I actually wouldn’t go quite that far, Chimp. There are situations — e.g., military research, or confidential product research — in which real scientific research is done, and sometimes done very well, but circumstances prevent widespread exposure of the work to scrutiny by other scientists. It’s still science, though it is obviously less trustworthy than science which is subjected to scrutiny by all comers.
OTOH — and this is probably what you meant — if there are no circumstances which prevent researchers from exposing their work to such scrutiny, yet they nevertheless try to prevent such scrutiny, then it certainly means they and their work cannot be trusted.

It was Warwick Hughes, and the entire story is here. Phil famously said:

We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.

MarkW April 24, 2018 at 4:08 pm

I’d love to see Kristi try to defend this statement.

Kristi Silber April 26, 2018 at 5:46 pm

MarkW –
I have no reason to, since I’m not defending them. The handling of data was disorganized and unprofessional.
At the same time, I can understand their motives. It would be a rotten position to have to give what you’ve worked so hard on to someone who really does only want it in order to find any possible weaknesses and gnaw on them until the whole study is discredited, whether justly or not.

“A rotten position”??? Kristi, that’s what science is about. You seem unfamiliar with the scientific process. It works as follows.
Someone puts their scientific ideas out in the open, along with all of the logic, data, observations, computer code, and everything necessary to understand and more important, to replicate their work.
Then other people try to find errors in their work, in the logic, the data, etc. And they see if they can replicate the work.
If the other people can replicate the work and they cannot find any errors in the logic, the data, the math, the computer code, etc., then the result is tentatively accepted as solid science. Otherwise, it goes in the scrapheap.
So having people try “to find any possible weaknesses” is not “a rotten position”. To the absolute contrary, it is an essential part of the adversarial system that is the heart of science. It is the only way that science advances.
One corollary of this is that science depends on total transparency. If someone like Phil Jones won’t reveal their data, the whole process comes to a halt because there is no way to tell if what Phil did is valid or not. And that is why, in my FOIA request, I asked for the underlying data to see if I could replicate what he’d done.
And that is why what Phil Jones did with both Warwick Hughes and myself was so wrong. He deliberately was hiding his data, using a bogus excuse that you and others seem to find acceptable. OF COURSE the people getting his data would try to find something wrong with it, that’s their job as honest scientists. It is how science progresses, e.g. by Wegner finding something wrong with the ideas about immobile tectonic plates.
Finally, you ask “Why do you insult me?”. My apologies if I have been too harsh, but I’m trying to wake you up to the fact that you truly do not understand what you are talking about. I’m a reformed cowboy, and the reform wasn’t as complete as I might have hoped, so sometimes I err on the side of brutal honesty.
But the fact is, you don’t even seem to get how science works, and I don’t know any touchy-feely way to break through to you so that you’ll notice it.
For example, I (and others of course) write scientific posts here, and guess what happens?
PEOPLE DO THEIR VERY BEST TO FIND ANY POSSIBLE WEAKNESSES IN MY WORK!
And far from me being in a “rotten position” because of that, I am extremely lucky that people do that. It has kept me from endless weeks or months of following a blind alley based on some error, some weakness, some logical misstep, some foolish assumption that I unknowingly made.
That’s how science works …
Best regards,
w.

Willis wrote, ““A rotten position”??? Kristi, that’s what science is about. …
PEOPLE DO THEIR VERY BEST TO FIND ANY POSSIBLE WEAKNESSES IN MY WORK!
And far from me being in a “rotten position” because of that, I am extremely lucky that people do that. It has kept me from endless weeks or months of following a blind alley based on some error, some weakness, some logical misstep, some foolish assumption that I unknowingly made.
That’s how science works …”Exactly!

Kristi wrote on April 26, 2018 at 3:53 pm, “MULTIPLE PEOPLE FROM CLIMATEAUDIT WERE MAKING FOIA REQUESTS AT THE SAME TIME, AND THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR THAT. CRU FELT IT WAS HARASSMENT.”
And Kristi wrote on April 26, 2018 at 8:51 pm, “The emails suggest to me that the scientists were feeling harassed by data requests, including by multiple people who knew each other. One researcher even conjectures that McIntyre was trying to distract him from his research.”
The reason they had so many data requests is that they had been stonewalling requests for the data for years. Look at the chronology:On Feb. 2, 2005, Phil Jones wrote, “…don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs [McIntyre & McKitrick] have been after the CRU station data for years.”
Note the word “years” (plural), back in early 2005 — so we know that Jones knows that McIntyre & McKitrick had been asking for the CRU station data at least since the beginning of 2003.
Here’s Phil Jones, Dec 3 , 2008, telling the UEA’s Information Compliance Manager, Mr. David Palmer, about how he has been deleting material subject to FOI request.
Here’s Palmer, on July 27, 2009 (to Jones, Osborn, and probably others), “I have 42 requests with virtually the same wording as below:
‘Pursuant to the Environmental Information Regulations, I hereby make an EIR/FOI request for the following information in respect to any confidentiality agreements affecting CRUTEM station data involving station data in [insert country names] …
I have a further 3 requests asking for the actual data that was sent to Georgia Tech plus one asking for station data from some islands in the Pacific …
I have another 5 requests that include more than just the ‘standard’ request above.'”
Note that by this time Jones el al have been stonewalling requests for the station data for over 5½ years!!!
BTW, Palmer understood the purpose of all those FOI requests, because in his email he quoted from the Climate Audit web site:“However, the inquiries are not really vexatious. We’re just trying to find out which countries these supposed confidentiality agreements apply to. Then we could FOI the rest.”
The problem is that Jones, Palmer et al were refusing to release the station data. Back in 2005 Jones had threatened to destroy the data, rather than hand it over, but instead they just invented fake excuses for not handing it over.
They claimed that they could not release the data because they had confidentiality agreements with some of the countries which supplied that data. But they also even refused to say which countries required such agreements.
That’s probably because it was all lies. There probably were never any such agreements, in the first place. The UEA people — Jones, Palmer, Osborn, etc. — are just dishonest, and they were flouting the law.
The reason they had so many FOIA requests by 2009 is that for many years they’d been brazenly refusing to obey the law and comply with FOIA requests, for years.

Dave Burton,
One more response
1) I never argued, and would not argue that the data belonged to Jones, et al. I agree that “They have no ethical right to hold that data hostage!” But neither do they have a right to break the previous agreements with others in order to satisfy those demanding the data. I don’t know why CRU didn’t provide the identity of the countries it belonged to, and refuse to conjecture. 90% of the data were available.
2. “It is not “a rotten position to have to give what you’ve worked so hard on to someone who really does only want it in order to find any possible weaknesses and gnaw on them until the whole study is discredited.” That’s what real scientists do.”
What “real scientists do” depends on the norms of the field at a point in time, and is different from what ideal scientists do. The field of climate science, I believe, responded defensively to the skeptic movement, rather than proactively. One result was wanting to keep information from them because they knew from experience what it would be used for. (This can be seen in the emails.) The scientific community didn’t know what to do – this wasn’t the way things had been done. They made mistakes, and it backfired.
“3. Temperature measurement data is not the results of “experiments,” and you can’t “start from scratch” and make a new batch. ”
You could start from scratch with the raw data.
The handling of climate data is a very complex process itself, with different datasets, station histories, systematic biases, UHI effects, errors, missing data, etc. Each step of making the data usable requires work (and therefore time and money), knowledge and expertise in knowing where to make adjustments, doing so and validating them.
It is scientifically constructive to share the resulting dataset with those who genuinely wish to advance science. So we must ask, does this apply to the people who wanted the data? Do the subsequent publications suggest meaningful alternatives or new insights? Have here been any studies using the data that advanced our knowledge of climate? Any suggestions for ways to deal more appropriately with the data? Or are the publications all about the mistakes, and do they suggest anywhere (in the publication or not) that these mistakes show climate science in general is not to be trusted? I have neither seen nor heard of ANYTHING that justifies saying that, That I would consider anti-science.
Others may have a legal right to the data, but that doesn’t mean they have an ethical right to it. The “we paid for it with our taxes” idea doesn’t work because it is a multi-national effort.
I’M NOT ARGUING THAT CRU DIDN’T ACT POORLY. THEY DID. JONES MAY HAVE ACTED ILLEGALLY. I HONESTLY DON’T KNOW, I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE OTHERS’ WORD FOR IT, AND I’M NOT GOING TO JUDGE WHAT I CAN’T ASSESS. IT’S IN THE PAST.
(Intellectual property rights can apply even when one is working for someone else. Depends on the contract. My uncle, a physicist at NOAA, got a patent a few years back for a device that will help NOAA and others collect aerosol data. It’s his patent, not NOAA’s, and he can profit from the production of the device.)
3. Yet the whole “hockey team” (and even the UEA Information Compliance Manager!) were willing to break the law to keep that data out of the hands of skeptics, and Jones even told Mann that he contemplated destroying that irreplaceable data to keep it out of the hands of skeptics.
I don’t believe there is any evidence that all these people were willing to break the law. Some were willing to do what they could legally to be uncooperative, maybe We don’t know all the conversations that went on about this. Jones talked about deleting a file. Talking about doing something is not illegal or unethical. Do you REALLY believe he would have destroyed irreplaceable data just to keep it out of the hands of skeptics? It so, there is no point in discussing anything with you, if you can’t even imagine that these people are anything but criminal, immoral monsters willing to do anything to be right; you would see them that way regardless of the evidence.

Kristi Silber, read your own comment. If Jones was not doing something hinky, why, pray tell was he so loathe to have anyone else check his work?

Curiously, Tom, while I thought that was the reason while it was all going on, the Climategate emails revealed the real reason he wouldn’t give us the data …
He couldn’t. He’d lost it. Strange but true. He couldn’t give it to me because he couldn’t find it.
I was thinking that the data would have been in a flat rectangular file, with rows being years, and columns being stations … but noooo. It was scattered irretrievably among dozens and dozens of folders, with duplicate data, new and old data, folders with identical names, and every kind of data mis-management that could be imagined.
Read the “Harry Read Me” file that was released along with the emails, and you’ll get a sense of just how lost they were and how lost their data was … and Jones didn’t want to admit that. In fact, he went to extraordinary lengths of lying to avoid admitting that simple fact.
If that’s not stranger than fiction, I don’t know what is.
Of course, Kristi, who probably never read the “Harry Read Me” file, will likely be along to assure us that I’m wrong, wrong, wrong, and Jones was an honest scientist and a poor victim of circumstance …
w.

In other words: they were grossly negligent, incompetent and so convinced about their “findings” that they didn’t care about correct management. Now they are wondering why nobody trusts the words of such a bunch of narcisstic egomaniacs. Steyn is right. Absolutely. A disgrace to their profession. No grand jury woud buy that crap. They are liars.

At 09:41 AM 2/2/2005, Phil Jones wrote (and I quoted), “[to] Mike [Mann], … And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs [McIntyre & McKitrick] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone…”
Kristi wrote, “I can understand their motives. … Among the emails demanding data: “1. raw monthly station temperature time series as contributed to Jones/CRU from various global meteorological organizations, together with metadata….” … This is not the kind of thing used in experimental replication. You want to replicate it, you start from scratch.”
I ungrammatically replied, “3. Temperature measurement data is not the results of “experiments,” and you can’t “start from scratch” and make a new batch.”
Kristi replied, “You could start from scratch with the raw data.”
Huh? Kristi, what do you think “the CRU station data” that “the two MMs [had] been after for years” is?

Willis wrote, “Read the “Harry Read Me” file that was released along with the emails, and you’ll get a sense of just how lost they were and how lost their data was…”
Here’s the link:http://sealevel.info/FOIA/2009/FOIA/documents/HARRY_READ_ME.txt
It appears to be the work-log/diary of a Mr. Ian (Harry) Harris, over about a four year period, ending just before the November, 2009 Climategate I bombshell.
It does convey a distinct impression of the CRU team of distinguished climate scientists…http://sealevel.info/the_uea_cru_science_team.png
Willis, which two countries had actually had made the CRU sign confidentiality agreements concerning their measurement data? Is the text of those agreements known?

Damn the years go by fast.
Did the CRU ever produce the “accidently deleted” raw temperature data that they promised to “reproduce” with in 3 years of the British Inquiry?The “Blinder well played” inquiry.
I recall the difficulty attempting to reproduce the CRU/IPCC description of past temperatures, included the fact that no one seemed to know which sets of “raw” data were used.
As for the Mann, he has been a blessing to sceptical viewers of the C.A.G.W fantasy.
No fiction writer could have credibly invented Mike Mann, as a character, yet he is still calling newcomers attention to the festering mess that is UN IPCC “science”.

Kristi, you seem to think that Mann and the others were exonerated by the “investigations”. There is a most excellent, detailed, and referenced analysis of why this is not the case here. H/T to Lucia for publishing this most interesting analysis.
Regards,
w.

Willis, I’d rather read the originals that that “analysis.” I don’t agree with it. It’s just repeating the same fictions, with no trust in the investigations.

Kristi, it’s not an “analysis”, it is an analysis, and a good one.
Unlike you, I read all of the “investigations”, which were laughable, at the time. I know what the investigators did and didn’t ask. I know that the people doing some of the investigations where best friends with those that they investigated.
To quote Shakespeare, regarding your insistence on ignoring facts, I have to say “This disease is beyond my practice” …
Come back when you have read both the analysis and the investigation reports, as I and others who were actually involved in the occurrences have done. If you find anything in the analysis that is not true, please let us know. Until you’ve done that, you’re just flapping your lips and protecting liars and cheats.
In the meantime, a quote for you about the Muir Russell investigation:

It is almost impossible to fully dissect the negligence of the Muir Russell inquiry in virtually every aspect of its duties. Muir Russell told the Parliamentary Committee that he didn’t ask Jones (or anyone else) about email deletions since that would in effect be asking them to confess to a crime. If their ‘rigour and honesty” was above question, as he declared, then surely he would have been able to ask them to re-assure him that they had not committed any crimes.

The original email here is one of the most notorious Climategate emails. The UK Information Commissioner said that “more cogent” prima facie evidence of an offence under the FOI Act was impossible to contemplate, but noted a statute of limitations limited their jurisdiction. The UK Parliamentary Committee asked Muir Russell to investigate. Muir Russell refused. Muir Russell pointed out to the Committee in his evidence last fall that asking Jones about delete emails might result in the identification of an offence.

SOURCE
That’s what you are calling an “investigation”, where Muir Russell didn’t even ask if the people had done what they confessed to doing in the emails. If that’s an investigation in your eyes, then you should open them.
You’re way over your head here, Kristi. You keep defending the indefensible, all the while falsely claiming that you’re not defending anyone … pull the other leg, it’s got bells on it.
w.

Willis,
From the analysis:
“What Jones was doing when he spoke of “hide[ing] the decline” was attempting to gloss over the divergence problem and the decline in temperatures that would be shown by continuing to use tree proxies when extrapolating temperatures as shown in a paper written by Keith Briffa of University of East Anglia [UEA] who was part of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU).”
Error 1: Repeating the false skeptic claims.
No, it wasn’t “glossing over the problem,” it was removing a part of the record that was incorrect and replacing it with one that was. They had discussed the problem elsewhere.
“III. Mike’s Nature Trick
“Understanding this requires a knowledge of statistics, and the ability to compare Mann’s work in his Nature paper with what Jones was doing for the WMO. In light of my limited knowledge of statistics, I am punting on this. See, for instance, https://climateaudit.org/2011/03/29/keiths-science-trick-mikes-nature-trick-and-phils-combo/”
Now the writer sends people to the site with which Mann has had so much trouble. This is a sign of an obviously biased report, and I don’t trust it. I don’t want to read it because it might clutter my mind with errors. I prefer original accounts to rehashed ones, annotated to tell you how to think about something, like this was (as I stated in another post):https://newzealandclimatechange.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/climategate-2-and-corruption-of-peer-review/
Think how you’d respond if I sent you links to Union of Concerned Scientist
You may have read all the reports, but as you say, you were involved. You can’t see the event from a distance because you were there, on one side. Sure, there are things the investigations didn’t ask – there always are! But it seems to me there is a fair bit of detail in the report I’ve been reading, as far as accusations and salient responses. It doesn’t let Jones off the hook, as you point out – so how could it be so tainted and corrupt?
It is far easier to pick apart someone else’s work that to do something original. Part of being a good scientist is creativity: the ability to think of alternatives. Einstein’s desire was not to show that Newton was wrong, he developed a new, more precise way of seeing the world; the rest was incidental. And even though Newton was wrong, his laws still provisionally apply and are useful in the everyday world.
I think there may be something fishy about what Mann did to create the hockey stick, but I don’t know and don’t really care. It could have been a mistake, it could have been intentional, but ultimately the same basic pattern has been repeated many times, so it must have been generally right, not a fluke created by an algorithm.
Jones was uncooperative. I’ve long thought he was not shiny clean in his ethics. He may have done something illegal, but I’m not positive; that would have to be worked out in the courts: the timing, the reasons, and how exceptions to the FOIA may have applied. I can understand his reasoning, but I think he was mistaken in doing what he did.
I can understand your reasoning and still think you are wrong, too. Some of our disagreement apparently boils down to different philosophies about how science is and should be conducted. Where did you get your ideas about it? It’s interesting that they are the same as Dave Burton’s, and I wonder if it’s a skeptic phenomenon. Science through antipathy. It’s a misunderstanding of the process, I believe.
(from Nov. 20, 2009, speaking about the emails)http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/
“It’s obvious that the noise-generating components of the blogosphere will generate a lot of noise about this. but it’s important to remember that science doesn’t work because people are polite at all times. Gravity isn’t a useful theory because Newton was a nice person. QED isn’t powerful because Feynman was respectful of other people around him. Science works because DIFFERENT GROUPS GO ABOUT TRYING TO FIND THE BEST APPROXIMATIONS OF THE TRUTH, and are generally very competitive about that. That the same scientists can still all agree on the wording of an IPCC chapter for instance is thus even more remarkable.” (my emphasis)

Willis,
Followed your link https://climateaudit.org/2010/07/22/blatant-misrepresentation-by-muir-russell-panel/
{email}
“29th May 2008: ―Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise”.
{CA explanation}
“As hundreds, if not thousands of people, know, David Holland had submitted an FOI request (denoted by UEA as 08-31) on May 27, 2008, only two days prior to the “delete any emails” request, a request which covered the correspondence between Eugene Wahl and Keith Briffa that Fred Pearce described as “back-channel communications that were a direct subversion” of IPCC policies of openness and transparency.””
Jones is telling them to delete emails bout AR4. Holland had no legal right to access to anything related to the IPCC except incidentally, if his name was in an email, too – his request was under the Data Protection Act. But as soon as CRU realized that people could get emails just by demanding anything with their name in it, they thought it prudent to delete certain subsets. AR4 was evidently one of them, and maybe that is actually out of professional integrity – that information is not theirs to give, it’s an international project.
Jones also deleted all emails with the names of skeptics in them, pursuant to the Holland request. He doesn’t want to hand them over. And why should he? Would you not feel violated if you had to hand over emails you thought were private, to have them shown to the world? You know how easy it is to cherry-pick and misinterpret. They did, too.
I don’t know what all CRU did. I don’t know what all the investigations did. I have not read the full story and even then I wouldn’t know the full story, But based on the links you’ve given me and the things you’ve said, I’ve no reason to buy your story, either. The evidence you’ve supplied me is almost all secondary: it’s interpretations of evidence rather than the evidence itself. This is a very common tact in skeptic arguments, and I think it demonstrates a lack of respect for impartiality. This is something that is part of the education of scientists, and laymen may not have that background.
I am not clear on the timeline of the whole thing, but it’s not important enough to me to go into it.
I don’t buy anyone’s story right now. I just don’t know, and I think that’s the most honest thing most people can say about it.
I don’t really care, either. It’s past. The scientific community learned a lot, and is better for it. Transparency matters. Things are changing, and it’s in the spirit of cooperation, professionalism, and quality of science. That’s what I see echoed in the literature.
Now if skeptics would stop their strategy of pointedly (and erroneously) discrediting science they don’t like, they might begin to be welcome participants in the discussion.
(If the hockey stick shape can be generated from noise, how come it was reproduced by so many others afterwards?)https://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/NH_Temp_Reconstruction.gif

Dave Burton,
You can interpret the evidence as you want, but that doesn’t make it the truth. You may be right, you may be wrong, I don’t presume to know. I see evidence both pro and con. There were animosity, distrust, agenda and lack of professionalism on both sides.
At any rate, I’m sick of the whole subject. I’m sick of “climategate” being used as an excuse not to trust the scientific community, and to say that it shows the depth of corruption in climate science. Some of the emails themselves show a strong dedication to scientific quality and integrity – those, however, are not excerpted for the skeptic crowd…
“There is some personal judgment involved in deciding whether to rebut.
Correcting bad science is the first concern. Responding to unfair
personal criticisms is next. Third is the possible misrepresentation of
the results by persons with ideological or political agendas. On the
basis of these I think the Baliunas paper should be rebutted by persons
with appropriate expertise….I refereed a virtually identical paper for
J. Climate, recommending rejection. All the other referees recommended
rejection too. The paper is truly appalling — but somehow it must have
been poorly reviewed by GRL and slipped through the net. I have no
reason to believe that this was anything more than chance. Nevertheless,
my judgment is that the science is so bad that a response is necessary.”http://sealevel.info/FOIA/1051156418.txt
“Firstly both Danny and Tom have complained to de Freitas {the editor suspected of circumventing standard peer review procedures} about
his editorial decision, which does not uphold the principles of good
science….
“Ignoring bad science eventually reinforces the apparent ‘truth’ of
that bad science in the public mind, if it is not corrected. As
importantly, the ‘bad science’ published by CR is used by the
sceptics’ lobbies to ‘prove’ that there is no need for concern over
climate change. Since the IPCC makes it quite clear that there are
substantial grounds for concern about climate change, is it not
partially the responsibility of climate science to make sure only
satisfactorily peer-reviewed science appears in scientific
publications? – and to refute any inadequately reviewed and wrong
articles that do make their way through the peer review process?
“I can understand the weariness which the ongoing sceptics’
onslaught would induce in anyone, scientist or not. But that’s no
excuse for ignoring bad science. It won’t go away, and the more
we ignore it the more traction it will gain in the minds of the general
public, and the UNFCCC negotiators. If science doesn’t uphold the
purity of science, who will?”http://sealevel.info/FOIA/1051230500.txt
As I see it, the above quotes show a few things about at least some of the scientists communicating in the emails: they are talking not about the messages of the skeptic papers, but about the quality and “purity” of the science. It is about the duty they feel to respond to poor science and to substandard publication practices. They believe this is how some skeptic articles are getting published (two emails actually list errors in papers they can see in the publications). They are tired of the “onslaught” from skeptics and having to devote time to rebutting poor science. And it shows how professional science is done: a rebuttal is written, shown to the authors of the criticized publication for comment, and then published in the professional literature.
Why aren’t these included in the excerpts skeptics gather and interpret? Because they show a different picture, one that doesn’t support the ideas they wish to spread.
More…
“I know about what Matthews has done…. He uses a statistical emulation method that can never account for
the full range of uncertainties. I would not trust it outside the
calibration zone — so I doubt that it can work well for (e.g.)
stabilization cases. As far as I know it has not been peer reviewed.
Furthermore, unless he has illegally got hold of the TAR version of the
model, what he has done can only be an emulation of the SAR version.
“Personally, I regard this as junk science (i.e., not science at all).
“Matthews is doing the community a considerable disservice.
“Tom.
“PS Re CR, I do not know the best way to handle the specifics of the
editoring. Hans von Storch is partly to blame — he encourages the
publication of crap science ‘in order to stimulate debate’. One approach
is to go direct to the publishers and point out the fact that their
journal is perceived as being a medium for disseminating misinformation
under the guise of refereed work.”
(Tom Wigley)
….
“P.S. On the CR issue, I agree that a rebuttal seems to be the only method
> of addressing the problem (I communicated this to Mike yesterday morning),
> and I wonder if a review of the refereeing policy is in order. The only way
> I can think of would be for all papers to go through two Editors rather
> than one, the former to have overall responsibility, the latter to provide
> a second opinion on a paper and reviewers’ comments prior to publication.”
(Tim Carter)http://sealevel.info/FOIA/1051190249.txt
Highlights:
—Point out specific problem with a paper
—It is “doing the community a considerable disservice” to publish “junk” science
—Want to improve the peer review process
TAKE-HOME MESSAGE: There is plenty of evidence that at least some of the scientists involved are truly concerned about the integrity and quality of science, and it is this that is the issue, not the desire to quash messages they don’t like. They found a problem in the peer review process associated with the journal, Climate Research, and they want to fix it. Skeptics claim CRU wanted to silence skeptical research, but they don’t consider the idea that some of that research may really be poor quality, not meeting normal professional standards for publication (from what I’ve seen of, for example, Soon’s work, I can easily imagine that’s the case).
My posting of alternative ideas has been considered “defending wrong or criminal practices” rather than simply pointing out that there are ways of looking at the emails as a whole. Too much in the emails has been intentionally ignored or misinterpreted in the drive to portray CRU as a den of iniquity, and climate science as full of corruption. Such obvious bias makes me far more skeptical of the claims of skeptics in general, but I try to consider them with an open mind, anyway.
Then again, people tell me I’m too blind and corrupt to see things as they are; if that’s true, I should just give up trying to think for myself. Should I do as I’m told, then, and mindlessly go along with the skeptics? Become another zombie, echoing all the same arguments, right or wrong? Or become a mindless alarmist, claiming that skeptics are just dumb, have nothing to say that’s worth listening to? Should I leave the site if I have different opinions, as some suggest? Or shut up until I know everything there is to know, including how I should interpret what a third person wrote?
I really ought to stop coming to this site. It’s a phenomenal waste of my time conversing with most of the people here – some of them tell me so. I’m obviously not good at conveying the message I wish to convey; I don’t think anyone has ever demonstrated that they even hear or understand it.

Willis, I’ve tried to be civil to you. At one point I even enjoyed exchanges with you. But your continued “puerile” insults of me are wearing thin. You are a bully.

Kristi, a bully is someone who imposes their will through threats of violence. You know, like “Give me your lunch money or I’ll punch you in the nose”.
However, no one can threaten anyone with web-based violence. How would this work:
“Give me your lunch money or I’ll call you names” …
Your claim that you have been bullied is a joke. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

I’ve been reading the climategate emails.
Then I go to the link you give me. There’s an excerpt, then, “The first point to note is their concern is as much about the impact upon policy as it is about the science.”

I’ve given you a raft of links. Which one is that from? Something I wrote? The Climategate emails? The comments on the emails?

THIS is the reason I have so little respect for your movement. You people can’t keep politics out of science, and you attribute political motives to scientists in order to cast doubt on the integrity of their research. It’s reprehensible.

Talk about having the stick by the wrong end! We don’t “attribute political motives to scientists”, they’ve done a great job of that themselves, no need for us to do so.
Remember back in 1988 how this all got started? By James Hansen secretly turning off the air conditioning and opening the windows of the room of the Senate Committee room where he was due to testify … and you accuse me and others of injecting politics into the science???

As I said, I have been reading the emails. I find this group of scientists talking about the purity of science, the quality of science. They believe it’s their professional duty to be whistleblowers. It’s not something they wanted to do. It’s interesting seeing these others on the same subject, but a different subset. They are interpreted in ways that are simply irresponsible, biased, imaginative, and meaningless. Read the emails, not the interpretations. Read them as typed, without the stress added. You probably have, and you want to see in them evil designs. Reason will get me nowhere because you are so filled with anger, or whatever it is, I don’t know.

I have not only read them as typed, I lived them. You appear to be deliberately blind to anything that disagrees with your world view. You don’t get it. Phil Jones lied to my face, as is clearly proven by the emails. He is convicted by his own words, and you find him pure as the driven snow … say what?

I read your whole email interaction about the FOIAs, too. I want to find out if skeptic complaints are justified. Still looking.

Kristi, the UK Parliamentary Committee said that Phil Jones’s actions, inter alia trying to illegally wriggle out from actually responding to my FOIA request, would have been subject to a criminal charge if the Statute of Limitations had not elapsed … and you still think somehow skeptics are just making things up …
Jones resigned in disgrace from his post at UAE and you still claim that nothing untoward occurred???
Sigh …

I don’t give a d— what you think about me, so you can insult me all you want – it just shows me the kind of person you are.

Hogwash. You obviously care a whole lot what I think about you, or you wouldn’t spend so much time harping on it. What I think is that you made up your mind a while back, and you are totally blind to any facts that might change your mind.
w.

Willis Eschenbach – They felt that they should warn the planet about what they saw in the data. I think most people think that that was how they thought of themselves.
You were close to it. It seems they wanted to do research and not be obliged to debate? They were still in the data interpretation stage? because why wouldn’t they use the ideas of their critics in what they wrote up?

Thanks, meteorologist. I am very aware that they felt compelled to “warn the planet”. It’s part of what is known as “Noble Cause Corruption”, where you justify whatever you do because your cause is so noble. They saw themselves as saving the world … and based on that they have lied, cheated, and stolen.
w.

meteorologist in research ,
The emails suggest to me that the scientists were feeling harassed by data requests, including by multiple people who knew each other. One researcher even conjectures that McIntyre was trying to distract him from his research. They also knew that their data would be used against them, rightly or wrongly. It’s not hard to abuse some data sets.
Emails can be interpreted multiple ways, obviously., especially when one doesn’t know the full circumstances or conversations.
It wasn’t simply a matter of not wanting to debate. It was a matter of being tired of having to rebut poor science and defend themselves from accusations of scientific error, fraud and corruption. Writing and publishing takes time. I imagine that to them there was no real debate because the skeptics’ position was in general scientifically weak, and a debate would consist mostly of defending one’s actions, words and science. Verbal debates require practice and preparation. Scientists do science, they don’t generally perform for the public or lobby Congress or write books for laymen trying to tear down the opposition (exceptions, I know).
“And it seems to me, now that I’ve read your side of it, that people need to work much harder with everyone, and every qualified opinion. ”
YES! Scientists should work together, not just try to tear each other down – that’s not a constructive use of time and resources. The hockey stick graph drew tons of attention when it got on the cover of IPCC, and that’s when people started trying to destroy it, not when it was first published 6 years earlier. McKitrick, an economist, wrote an article condemning the statistics based on assumptions he made about what was done, and published it on ClimateAudit – along with a bit of commentary. Maybe some version made it to the journals, I don’t know. The battle is primarily driven by policy and politics, not science, and in my judgement it is the skeptics that don’t seem to see much need to separate the two. They are convinced that mainstream science is agenda-driven. I don’t see that at all.

meteorologist in research ,
The emails suggest to me that the scientists were feeling harassed by data requests, including by multiple people who knew each other. One researcher even conjectures that McIntyre was trying to distract him from his research. They also knew that their data would be used against them, rightly or wrongly. It’s not hard to abuse some data sets.

Kristi, you’ve totally misunderstood the timing of the FOIA requests. For quite a while, there was just my request, and then maybe one other from David Holland. You likely have never heard of him. I had him as my houseguest last week, like me he’s mentioned in the Climategate emails, and is a most interesting man … as I said, I was in the middle of this nonsense, and I know the players.
I was regularly reporting the sequential lies that Phil Jones and the FOIA person were feeding me on Steve McIntyre’s climateaudit.org website. Their lies just went on and on. And after a while, when it became obvious that I was just being fed lie after lie after lie, a bunch of other people reading the website decided to file FOIA requests.
In part we were forced to do so, because an FOIA request needs to be specific. Phil Jones had lied saying that there were secrecy contracts with some countries which had provided him with data … but he wouldn’t say what countries. Since we couldn’t make a blanket request for the alleged contracts, and Phil wouldn’t tell us what the countries were, we were forced to have each person write a request for the putative secrecy contracts for a different country.
Note that all of this could have been avoided had Phil Jones simply sent me the data when I first asked for it. Not, please note, when I filed the FOIA request. I would not have had to file the FOIA request if Phil had been an honest scientist and sent me the data when I politely asked for it.
Were we trying to “distract” some researcher from his work? Nonsense. WE WERE TRYING TO GET AN HONEST ANSWER TO A SIMPLE REQUEST FOR DATA. Your claim is fatuous nonsense, you’ve swallowed the researcher’s claim without investigating it. A bunch of people filed FOIA requests for a simple reason—because Phil Jones et al. were lying and evading my one FOIA request, and we hoped to bring them to their senses.
Finally, would their data be “used against them”? Again, that’s a joke. I asked for the data for a simple scientific reason—because without it I couldn’t tell whether Phil Jones was just making things up. Transparency is central to science, and the crazy idea that you shouldn’t give your data to someone who is trying to find errors in it is absolutely antithetical to science. That’s what scientists do, try to find errors in other people’s work.
Here’s what I’ve recommended—give your data, your code, and everything underlying your claim to your worst scientific opponent, the guy who doesn’t believe you at all. Why?
Because if they can’t find something wrong with it, then you’re in good shape … but under no circumstances can a scientist legitimately refuse data to someone because they will try to find errors in it. That’s how science progresses, by Barry Marshall finding errors in the claims that ulcers are caused by worry …
Like I’ve said more than once, you appear to be totally clueless about what actually happened and why … instead, it seems you blindly believe the nonsense that the scientists were putting out to fool folks like you into believing that they were the victims in the case, when in fact they were the criminals.
Regards,
w.

Willis,
“it seems you blindly believe the nonsense that the scientists were putting out to fool folks like you into believing that they were the victims in the case, when in fact they were the criminals.”
How could the scientists put out nonsense to fool folks when they thought they were emailing privately? That doesn’t make sense.
I got the timing wrong, OK – but on the other hand, you don’t know how many others were making requests when you were. And bombarding them with requests wasn’t judicious if you wanted their cooperation.
Science is not about looking for flaws. That’s part of it, sure, but for the most part that’s handled by the peer review process. Those who do nothing but try to find flaws in another group’s work are not scientists – especially if they publish it in a blog.
Replication is fine, but do it from the ground up. Don’t expect anyone to give you their computer code – that’s intellectual property.
Why do you not believe part of the data belonged to another country? That has been investigated, of course. CRU couldn’t give you all the data because it wasn’t their to give. And you know what? He was under no legal obligation to tell you who had it. I sure wouldn’t have wanted to.
Science should not be an adversarial process.
Core contrarians aren’t just fellow scientists, they are the enemy. They have made themselves the enemy to mainstream science not through their ideas, but through their lack of professionalism, and their public attacks on scientific institutions, motives and integrity. And through their influence on the public, they are delaying action, making things worse.
So why should anyone want to cooperate with you?
“Here’s what I’ve recommended—give your data, your code, and everything underlying your claim to your worst scientific opponent, the guy who doesn’t believe you at all.”
Do you have any idea how much work goes into that?
Don’t you understand that people will find problems that don’t exist? That there is thought and reasoning and steps that aren’t reported in the literature?
Read an article. Evaluate it. If you find errors, write a rebuttal. That’s how science is done.
Either that or replicate the experiment from the ground up. Replication is not just to find out if the scientist made a mistake, but also to see if the results were just a statistical anomaly.
Anything else is a waste of time an resources. Your idea of science creates animosity rather than cooperation. Don’t you see? You don’t pick a study you don’t like and try to find error with it.
“…under no circumstances can a scientist legitimately refuse data to someone because they will try to find errors in it. That’s how science progresses, ” NO. That’s how disrespect progresses. You are saying, “I think you’re hiding something or doing something wrong. I don’t know what, but I’m going to find it.”
“Like I’ve said more than once, you appear to be totally clueless about what actually happened and why … instead, it seems you blindly believe the nonsense that the scientists were putting out to fool folks like you into believing that they were the victims in the case, when in fact they were the criminals.”
That’s such total BS. I make mistakes, and you are welcome to correct them; I haven’t read every single email in it’s proper position and I refuse to read anything that has parts emphasized. But blindly believing, my asss.
The criminals were the ones who hacked the emails. Who would that have been? Do you wonder?
And yes, the people whose emails were hacked were definitely victims.
It’s strange, I can’t help but like you for some reason, even though I think you are wrong-headed.

And bombarding them with requests wasn’t judicious if you wanted their cooperation.

I didn’t “want their cooperation”. Cooperation with the FOIA process is REQUIRED BY LAW. It’s not optional. Read the damn law, do your homework, stop making childish allegations and claims.

Science is not about looking for flaws. That’s part of it, sure, but for the most part that’s handled by the peer review process.

Oh, dear heavens, the amount of your ignorance is stunning. The review process is a very mild check to see if there is anything obviously wrong, and whether the references are all there, that kind of thing. The review process is not how the errors in the incorrect idea of immobile tectonic plates was discovered. Einstein discovered the flaw in Newtons work, despite several generations of reviewers giving it a pass. You truly have no clue about the peer-review process. Have you ever published a peer-reviewed paper? My guess is no, otherwise you wouldn’t say such dumb things about the process.

Replication is fine, but do it from the ground up. Don’t expect anyone to give you their computer code – that’s intellectual property.

I didn’t ask Phil for his computer code, I asked him for his data. Please try to follow the story.

Why do you not believe part of the data belonged to another country? That has been investigated, of course. CRU couldn’t give you all the data because it wasn’t their to give. And you know what? He was under no legal obligation to tell you who had it. I sure wouldn’t have wanted to.

Again, you totally misunderstand the FOIA process. He WAS under a legal obligation. In addition, he FLAT OUT LIED when he claimed that a whole bunch of data was covered under contract. At the end of the day there were two contracts out of all of the countries of the world.
Again I say, you are in a deep hole and rather than actually doing your homework, you just keep finding new incorrect claims to jump on.
Go away and do your damn homework. Correcting you over and over on this basic stuff has grown tiresome. I’m done with you.
w.

Willis,
“Oh, dear heavens, the amount of your ignorance is stunning. The review process is a very mild check to see if there is anything obviously wrong, and whether the references are all there, that kind of thing. The review process is not how the errors in the incorrect idea of immobile tectonic plates was discovered. Einstein discovered the flaw in Newtons work, despite several generations of reviewers giving it a pass.”
No, that is not how science works. YOU don’t get it. You think plate tectonics was discovered by trying to find holes in someone else’s research? Do you think it was “proved” because it furthered a political agenda? No. Experiments may be exactly replicated in some fields – health, pharmacology, medical, safety – but usually there’s something new, some new twist. It’s not perfectly replicated. It’s expanded, or focuses on one area, or it’s repeated in a new setting or with a new species. It is productive of new information as well as overlapping with the old. Science gradually finds the errors, as things don’t add up.
There is at least one journal that makes the review process transparent to the public, and I think that’s a good thing. Peer review is important. It’s not taken lightly – not by good reviewers, anyway. It’s part of one’s professional duty and it’s a learning experience. Some are better than others, of course, or see things that others don’t. I’m not saying it’s perfect; it’s well-known that errors get through, but by and large they don’t invalidate the work. (The recent post about over half are “false results” was misleading .)
Peer review, ideally, encompasses the reasoning, clarity and structure of the language, the experimental design and statistical analyses, and the conclusions reached. If errors get through, there are rebuttals after publication. But NO, one doesn’t repeat an experiment looking for errors. That is showing distrust in the scientific process. It’s wasteful. But the most important point is that if that’s what science did, there would be tribalism, scientists against scientists. That is what has become of the scientific community, and it’s counterproductive.
It’s much better to have science friendly and make a few mistakes than angry, distrustful, uncooperative, destructive and making new mistakes (just because McKitrick said he found flaws in the hockey stick doesn’t mean they were there!).
The American Petroleum Institute started a propaganda campaign just after the first Hockey Stick.
Pay close attention, now: I AM NOT DEFENDING ANYONE. I’M PRESENTING AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW. I cannot read Jones’s mind – maybe he is a liar. But when it comes to choosing whom to believe, I go with the investigators. They were not involved, they had distance from the subject.
I suppose you’ve read this? You think it’s corrupt?https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387/38702.htm

No, that is not how science works. YOU don’t get it. You think plate tectonics was discovered by trying to find holes in someone else’s research? Do you think it was “proved” because it furthered a political agenda? No.

The woman who wrote bout another woman’s decades-long efforts to fight for her maps of the tectonic theory/great rift/atlantic rift presence – not even the entire plate theory, merely to get her ideas aknowledged that there WERE mountain ranges below the surface would disagree stringly with your blase hand-waving. Scientific theory changes ARE FOUND tooth and nail and with more emotions and power and appointments and bureaucratic strategies and publications than military conflicts.

Kristi: The more you deny you are blindly defending the conspirators because of their positions in authority and their support for the faith positions you espouse, the more your arguments become emotionally based.

I wrote,“…by this time [2009] Jones el al have been stonewalling requests for the station data for over 5½ years!!!… Back in 2005 Jones had threatened to destroy the data, rather than hand it over, but instead they just invented fake excuses for not handing it over. / They claimed that they could not release the data because they had confidentiality agreements with some of the countries which supplied that data. But they also even refused to say which countries required such agreements. / That’s probably because it was all lies. There probably were never any such agreements, in the first place.”
Kristi wrote [that she doesn’t know what science is and doesn’t want to; that she thinks the American Statistical Association, the Royal Society & the International Council for Science don’t know their business; and/or perhaps that we just haven’t figured out how to communicate with her]
Willis wrote, “At the end of the day there were two contracts out of all of the countries of the world.”
Really! I didn’t know that, Willis. I’ve long suspected that there were no such agreements, at all.
Which two countries actually had made the CRU sign confidentiality agreements concerning their measurement data?
Was the text of those agreements ever discovered?

Dave Burton,
I’m sorry I haven’t gotten to your posts. I have been reading links you send. Many of the general arguments overlap with those I’ve been having with Willis, but there are individual cases too numerous to address now..
“Kristi wrote [that she doesn’t know what science is and doesn’t want to; that she thinks the American Statistical Association, the Royal Society & the International Council for Science don’t know their business; and/or perhaps that we just haven’t figured out how to communicate with her]”
This is pretty messed up. If that’s what you think, you have no chance of ever understanding me. And if you can’t understand me, you have no right to interpret what I’m saying. Or it’s just a straight-out insult. How insipid.
The ASA discussion of reproducibility and replication. was interesting
“[R]eproducibility meant releasing data and code such that others may regenerate your results on their own systems…
“….Without open code and data, we cannot resolve differences in output between independent methods or independent implementations of even purportedly identical methods”
>>>So the purpose of this is comparison between two codes in the process of evaluating output.
“Replication Standard in 1995: ‘[T]hat sufficient information exists with which to understand, evaluate, and BUILD UPON a prior work if a third party could replicate the results WITHOUT ANY ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FORM THE AUTHOR.’
>>>The data are now posted, so this should be a standard considered met.
“Reproducibility is a more general term, implying both replication and the regeneration of findings with AT LEAST SOME INDEPENDENCE FROM THE CODE AND/OR DATA associated with the original publication. Both refer to the analysis that occurs after publication.”
>>>This means that NEW SCIENCE is being done, it’s not just a repeat of the old experiment. This is NECESSARY in replication/reproduction, or the same errors can be made (or others made up). Then you take the output of the conflicting research and try to figure out what’s different. It could be an error, or it could be something interesting.
The standards of data and code sharing are evolving in climate science toward more transparency. It’s a process. Things were different before the internet, and science is still catching up.
But at any rate, I stand by my assertion that science is not about trying to tear apart the research one doesn’t like. Scientists make mistakes, that’s a given, but it is counterproductive to make it one’s goal to police someone’s work unless you have good reason to believe they are doing something wrong.
I can understand wanting the data for the surface stations if one suspects they are poorly sited. But if one is then going to publish something about it, one should make it scientific – not just a chart of how many stations are poorly sited, but what that actually means for the data. It turns out it meant much less than it appeared from the descriptive paper; the second paper about the station data was more scientific.
There is a lot of pseudo-science published on the internet that is cluttering the playing field with erroneous ideas. Monckton’s feedback, for example. The public is being misled.
I’m sorry, I know I haven’t responded to your links, except in my head – I’ve got my arguments, but it’s too much right now. I’m just rambling at this point. It’s hard absorbing all this additional information on top of what I’ve been pursuing, and then trying to write about it with clarity in multiple conversations.

Kristi wrote, “I can understand wanting the data for the surface stations if one suspects they are poorly sited.”
No. The temperature measurement data is necessary for any sort of analysis of the temperature data.
The purpose of Phil Jones and the UEA CRU holding that data hostage, and even contemplating killing it, was to prevent other scientists from analyzing it. It was to stop scientific research from being done.
But those enemies of science and their supporters nevertheless have the supreme chutzpah to accuse the very scientists whose research they were impeding of being “anti-science.”
They sought to block other scientists from doing research using the data because they knew or feared that their own analyses were not bullet-proof, and would not withstand scrutiny.

“… and based on that they have lied, cheated, and stolen.”
I hadn’t heard about that part. But this isn’t science to me, this is people arrogant enough to think they can get away with not doing the work of science.
I understand that it’s a field with many complexities and uncertainties and chaotic back-and-forth oscillations, however you want to call it. And it seems to me, now that I’ve read your side of it, that people need to work much harder with everyone, and every qualified opinion. I’m not sure that the conclusions will be any more reliable, because it’s so early in the warming.

No, Willis, I don’t care what you think of me. I may have at one point, but not anymore. If I answer you, it’s for the benefit of others to see what I mean.
“Kristi, a bully is someone who imposes their will through threats of violence. You know, like “Give me your lunch money or I’ll punch you in the nose”.”
That’s a very narrow definition. So, if you aren’t a bully, what are you? An a-hole? Why do you insult me?
“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
Does it look like I can’t?
“I’ve given you a raft of links. Which one is that from? Something I wrote? The Climategate emails? The comments on the emails?”https://newzealandclimatechange.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/climategate-2-and-corruption-of-peer-review/
Immediately after the first link, which mentions NOTHING about policy, the interpreter tells the audience, “The first point to note is their concern is as much about the impact upon policy as it is about the science. This will become important for setting the context for the progressive process in which they eventually seek to destroy the career of the offending editor.”
Yes, this sets the stage, doesn’t it? The narrator has told the audience how to interpret what follows. Yep, they want the editor out! That’s because the editor is not doing the job, is being unprofessional, and the standards of scientific publication are being compromised. In one of the “climategate” emails, the writer is so frustrated that he lists half a dozen errors in a paper that just got published.
I’M FIGHTING BIAS, PROPAGANDA, ERRONEOUS ASSUMPTIONS, MISINTERPRETATIONS. I READILY ADMIT THEY EXIST ON BOTH SIDES. I CHOOSE THIS FORUM BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE IS DISCUSSING IT.
I don’t defend Jones or the others regarding the data-sharing. I have said it was not professional. Jones lied, yes. I have long believed that Jones wasn’t the epitome of ethical purity, that is not news to me. I have long had a distaste for Mann, too. However, I am not going to take from this the message that science in general is corrupt or unreliable – not even if some publications were intentionally kept out of the IPCC. This is because i believe in the genuine respect the majority of climate scientists have for good science. This is a BELIEF. It’s personal. It doesn’t mean I am not open to other views, or that I can’t understand them. However, underlying it all is a conviction that propaganda has had a major impact on the mindset of skeptics, just as alarmism has influenced CAGWers. I’m sick of seeing bias promoted and nurtured at WUWT through titles and text that misrepresent articles, and insulting, snide and jeering annotation.
I’m sure there’s more I could say in response, but I have better things to do.

Wilis:
“136. Conclusion 1 The focus on Professor Jones and CRU has been largely misplaced. On the accusations relating to Professor Jones’s refusal to share raw data and computer codes, we consider that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community. We have suggested that the community consider becoming more transparent by publishing raw data and detailed methodologies. On accusations relating to Freedom of Information, we consider that much of the responsibility should lie with UEA, not CRU.”https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387/38708.htm

Shortly after the “hockey stick” came out and was gaining public attention I decided to look into it with an open mind (since I had no opinion on it one way or the other). Back then many universities had pretty open web pages and you could find ongoing research papers and discussions among the researchers. I, almost immediately came upon a statement by one of the hockey stick/warming proponents to the effect: “I have been accused of ignoring data which contradicts my findings. The theory is so obviously true that ignoring such data is justified.” As soon as I read that I knew It was pseudo-science and have been skeptical ever since. Reading the warming papers and examining every claim carefully. Everything I encounter from then warming crew validates my skepticism.

meteorologist in research asked Jim, “So there was no abrupt warning?”
There have been several warming episodes, but not particularly “abrupt,” and only weakly correlated with CO2 levels.
For instance, in these two graphs, over the fifty years covered by the 1895–1946 graph CO2 rose by only 15 ppmv (5.3%), but over the fifty years covered by the 1957–2008 graph CO2 rose by 70 ppmv (22.5% = more than 4× the CO2 forcing) — yet the two graphs are so similar that you probably cannot guess which is which:http://www.sealevel.info/1895-1946_1957-2008_temperature-compare.png
Compare those small temperature shifts with the Greenland ice core records, which indicate that in the past Greenland has experienced some truly abrupt persistent temperature shifts, as rapid as several degrees per decade — and all of it natural.

…a jump in Greenland’s air temperatures of 10-15 degrees (C) in just a few decades beginning about 14,700 years ago.
[and] … about 12,800 years ago … abrupt cooling of some 5-9 degrees (C), also over a matter of decades.

That’s at least ten times as rapid as the “warming spurt” which we experienced in the 1980s and 1990s, and the similar one which we experienced in the 1920s and 1930s.

A 2014 paper by LLNL’s Ben Santer, et al sought to subtract out the effects of ENSO and the Pinatubo (1991) & El Chichón (1982) volcanic aerosols, from measured (satellite) temperature data, to find the underlying temperature trends. This graph is “Fig. 1c” from that paper; the black line is averaged CMIP5 models, the blue & red are measured temperatures:http://sealevel.info/Santer_2014-02_fig2_graphC_1_133pct.png
Two things stand out:
1. The models run hot. The CMIP5 computer models (the black line), which are tuned with the assumption that at least 100% of 20th century warming is anthropogenic, and an average ECS climate sensitivity of about 3.0°C per doubling of CO2, show a lot more warming than the satellites. The models predict about 0.20°C/decade warming over the 34-year measurement period, but the satellites measured only about half that. And,
2. The “pause” in global warming began around 1993. The measured warming is all in the first 14 years (1979-1993). Their graph (with corrections to compensate for both ENSO and volcanic forcings) shows no noticeable warming since then.
Note, too, that although the Santer graph still showed an average of about 0.1°C per decade of warming, that’s partially because it started in 1979, at the chilly end of an extended cooling period in the northern hemisphere. If it had started in 1950, when CO2 levels first really took off, the per-decade warming trend would have been even less.

daveburton – It looks like we were unlucky to have natural warming before 1946. There was no influence from human activities before 1946?
Large temperature swings in Greenland were probably due to the AMOC. If the Gulf Stream shuts down will England blame it on the Sun?

daveburton – “Note, too, that although the Santer graph still showed an average of about 0.1°C per decade of warming,…”
I haven’t read about the accuracy of the thermometers in these studies. I know that large, expensive temperature readouts that were used in military weather stations were never expected to be accurate within 0.5 degrees F. And they had weather maintenance crews performing monthly checks.
Mathematical methods can smooth out data and etc., but I’ve always wondered what the thinking was about a change of a tenth of a degree.

This is for Ms. Silber:
One Albert Einstein stated, unambiguously, regarding his then-new theories, “No amount of experimentation can prove me right. A single experiment can prove me wrong.”
Apparently he had no problem with “outsiders” investigating, probing, and perhaps even finding an error in his predictions. One almost gets the sense that he welcomed such testing, in hopes of advancing even farther.
Sir Isaac Newton is claimed to have stated, “If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.”
Somehow, that looks like real science to this Deplorable observer.
My regards to all,
Vlad (who, as a consultant within my field [of science], is PAID to poke holes in, and find problems with, other specialists’ work … … … )

Vlad,
For goodness sakes, I’m not saying don’t experiment.
What is your field of science?
Climate science is like mine, ecology. It’s messy, complex, uncertain, stochastic, dynamic, full of feedbacks and interactions. It’s more profitable to create than destroy – errors will surface and be eliminated in the process.
See my post to Willis,
Kristi Silber April 27, 2018 at 10:19 pm

Ms. Silber:
Suffice it to say that I’ve read the vast majority of your posts; from what I have gleaned, you have a very poor understanding of science, and the process. Your statement, “For goodness sakes (sic), I’m not saying don’t experiment.” is a complete non-sequitur.
I do soft-rock petroleum geophysics. This means that I’m geologically adept. It also means that I’m in a field which has been doing ‘paleoclimatology’ (as one small aspect of the overall picture) for nigh unto three centuries. These newbies who “created” a new field about three decades ago have very little expertise in scientific endeavors, other than their vaunted “models”, which are incapable of describing a coupled, non-linear, dynamic system, yet these “models” are the foundation for the whole CAGW hypothesis.
As is the subject of this post, Mann et al eliminated known time frames that were ‘warmer’ than now. He did not provide any calibration data for how his “trees” responded only to changes in temperature, he hid methodology, and so on. As shown above, if one is so certain, one puts everything out there, so that others can and will investigate. If the thesis is a step forward, all is well. If it is a blind alley, it is best we find out quickly, so that we do not waste effort chasing after unicorn flatulance, as it were.
Thomas Edison stated, “I did NOT fail to create a viable electric light bulb 10,000 times. I successfully found 10,000 ways NOT TO MAKE a light bulb.” We need to know when research is viable, and pursue it, and when it is not viable, and discard it.
You, for whatever reason, completely accept that human-produced carbon dioxide is causing a change in average global temperatures. You are welcome to continue this belief, however, the geological record is quite compelling that this hypothesis is completely wrong. I cannot produce them here, as they are the intellectual property of one Mr. Bill Illis (who regularly posts and comments), but he has produced the most amazing chart of CO2 vs. Temperature for the past 750 million years. If you have not seen it, someone here (a mod, or Anthony, or perhaps even Bill himself) may be able to access and post it or send it to you.
A brief summary of what it shows: temperature and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have no relationship to each other. For example, during the Cryogenian Period, atmospheric carbon dioxide was present in amounts measured in percents (between 4 and 13, according to multiple versions of Gradstein, Ogg, and Ogg, “Geologic Time Scale”, the latest one produced in 2016), yet the Earth was in the state popularly known as “Snowball Earth” (hence the name Cryogenian). At the same time, one of the life forms living in what open ocean existed during the glacial pulses, were stromatolites, who, despite the cool ocean water, rich in dissolved CO2, were able to create calcium carbonate-based structures. Stromatolites still thrive near Australia today, so it would seem that whatever has happened geologically since then, life continues in spite of what atmospheric carbon dioxide does.
You are most welcome to your beliefs; I believe differently, and I have a basis for believing what I do. The ” … single experiment … ” which disproves carbon dioxide’s role in changing or controlling atmospheric temperatures has been completed multiple times (Vostok, EPICA), and in many ways. If you do not accept what multiple lines of inquiry have provided, that is your choice.
Warmest regards,
Vlad (yes,a pseudonym bestowed upon me by one Mr. “Harry TwinOtter”, who at one time posted here, and continues to post at JoNova; I think he was trying to insult me after an exchange in which I skewered him)

Vlad,
“from what I have gleaned, you have a very poor understanding of science, and the process.”
My understanding is from my field. I should preface my statements with that from now on, I guess, but it appears to me that climate science is very similar. I imagine the science in your field is quite different. In fact, I hypothesize that there is a higher proportion of skeptics in some “scientific” fields because their methods and ways of seeing science is so different. Geologists and engineers seem well-represented among skeptics compared to biologists, for example (based on experience as well as the figures from the old skeptic petition with 31,000 people on it).
I have a poor understanding of the science used in your profession, OK, I can accept that. But I don’t accept that my understanding of the scientific process is generally poor. You don’t even tell me what’s “poor” about it.
I’ve heard countless arguments about the past. The past is informative, but it’s a mistake to believe that it’s a window on the present or that it will show us what to expect, or that conditions in the past show that everything will be fine. It doesn’t matter if temp and CO2 weren’t always correlated in the past, or if CO2 lagged temperature change; that is not evidence that CO2 can’t affect temperature; it’s not even evidence that it didn’t. Just as correlation is not causation, a lack of correlation doesn’t mean something isn’t a factor, only that it’s not the primary one. The whole point is that our circumstances are unique in the history of the world: the actions of a single species are creating global conditions that have never been experienced before by that species (even in the MWP).
I can say this, too: “You are most welcome to your beliefs; I believe differently, and I have a basis for believing what I do…If you do not accept what multiple lines of inquiry have provided, that is your choice.”

Dave Burton,
One more response
1) I never argued, and would not argue that the data belonged to Jones, et al. I agree that “They have no ethical right to hold that data hostage!” But neither do they have a right to break the previous agreements with others in order to satisfy those demanding the data. I don’t know why CRU didn’t provide the identity of the countries it belonged to, and refuse to conjecture. 90% of the data were available.

You still don’t get it. When Jones said that he couldn’t give me the data because of the confidentiality agreements, I said OK, fine, give me the data that is not covered.
He refused to do that.
You’re still laboring under the delusion that Jones et al. were honorable men. They were not. They began planning how to avoid the FOIA requests before the first one ever came in. The story about confidentiality agreements, and their subsequent refusal to supply the names of the countries involved, were just another couple of their unending pathetic bogus excuses invented to not comply with a legal request for the data.
And yet you continue to avoid that simple conclusion … they were crooks, Kristi, and but for the Statute of Limitations they would have been held to account. But you want to excuse everything they did … I do gotta say, though, you are just as good at inventing pathetic bogus excuses as they were, perhaps even better …
Sadly,
w.

For Ms. Silber:
Suppose we start with this: the original thesis of Mann et al, was that the annual growth rings of trees are solely a reflection of the temperature of the environment in which they live (or lived), hence the coining of the term ‘treemometers’ on this site.
Do you, as an ecologist, support this belief, unconditionally? Since I do not want you ‘ … wasting … ‘ any more time here at WUWT than necessary, a simple “yes” or “no” will suffice.
As to your ‘poor’ understanding of science, I’ll start with the statement you made at post on 28 April 2018, at 1642 hours (PDT, I believe). You made this statement, directly above a graph you also supplied:
“(If the hockey stick shape can be generated from noise, how come it was reproduced by so many others afterwards?)”
The lack of understanding in this one statement absolutely floors me! Random noise, fed into the algorithm, produces the same shape as Mann’s original, and you see nothing wrong with this? The algorithm ONLY produces ‘hockey sticks’, it is NOT producing an accurate analysis of anything, even if one allows that a tree ring is/can be an accurate descriptor of ambient temperature.
Then there’s this statement:
” I imagine the science in your field is quite different. ”
Not from what I can tell. The methodologies, standards, reporting, and accountability requirements are the same for me (geology), Physics, Chemistry, Biology … you name it. We do not have “different” kinds of science, subject to arbitrary and fluid standards. The name of the field can be changed, but the same criteria apply across the board to those who practice within their fields. If you practice within a field that allows one to “feel” their constraints, then it becomes clear that you have a very poor understanding of what science is, and how to practice it.
We move onto this gem:
” The past is informative, but it’s a mistake to believe that it’s a window on the present or that it will show us what to expect, or that conditions in the past show that everything will be fine. It doesn’t matter if temp and CO2 weren’t always correlated in the past, or if CO2 lagged temperature change; that is not evidence that CO2 can’t affect temperature; it’s not even evidence that it didn’t.”
Let me get this straight: we find at least one time ( ” … one experiment … ” ) where temperature and CO2 are dissociate, and this is NOT ” … evidence that CO2 can’t affect temperature;” Sorry, yes it is. Anytime the two are going in opposite directions, or if one lags the other (as you yourself stated), then we have a piece of the puzzle that says, CO2 does not control temperature. It didn’t back then, and it doesn’t now.
Since you also believe that, “The past is informative, but it’s a mistake to believe that it’s a window on the present … “. Thanks, you just invalidated the entire field of Geology as a discipline. The past tells us many things, among them that climate has always changed, and always will change, and we have evidence that the hypothesis of ‘changing CO2 concentration is having any measurable effect on present-day global temperatures’ is completely false. The change we see today is neither exceptional, nor outside of the variation of the past (and you yourself mentioned the MWP, so apparently you accept that there was one, even though Mann did everything in his power to eliminate it).
“… it’s not even evidence that it didn’t.” The two parameters are opposite, yet this is NOT evidence that CO2 wasn’t affecting temperatures? Your lack of understanding grows.
Then we have this one:
” Just as correlation is not causation, a lack of correlation doesn’t mean something isn’t a factor, only that it’s not the primary one. ” Precisely; this is what us “skeptics” and “den1ers” have been saying. CO2 is NOT a primary controller of global climate (the past shows us this quite clearly), and you’ve just admitted that there are other ‘factors’ that can, and do, overwhelm anything CO2 might be doing.
And you wonder why I consider your understanding of science to be so poor? Correlation is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition, for causality. When or if I find two parameters with a correlation, it then becomes necessary to establish causality. If there is more than a single instance that the two parameters are NOT correlated, then the causality becomes suspect. In the case of CO2 drives temperature, the multitudes of evidence, not just a single instance, points to the conclusion that the two have no relationship to each other.
You are, as far as I’m concerned, welcome to languish in the state of fear of mythical hobgoblins (h/t, H. L. Mencken), but your fears are not founded upon any sound science. My “partners in crime” and I will continue to enjoy how much greener the Earth is, thanks to the plant food carbon dioxide, and its increasing abundance within our atmosphere.
Regards to all,
Vlad

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